MoSe2: a promising non-noble metal catalyst for direct ethanol synthesis from syngas

Direct synthesis of ethanol from syngas (a mixture of H 2 and CO) is considered as an eco-friendly and industrially important process to produce renewable fuels and chemicals. The current non-noble metal catalyst systems suffer from either low selectivity or multiple processes with high energy consumption. Here, we report a novel molybdenum diselenide-based catalyst system for high-selective conversion of syngas into ethanol. For a series of K-promoted MoSe 2 catalysts with different K/Mo ratios (K x -MoSe 2 , x = 0.25-1.00), K 1.00 -MoSe 2 surprisingly exhibits excellent ethanol selectivity up to 58.7 C mol % in total alcohols and 31.1 C mol % in the total product, which is higher than the highest selectivity value for the non-noble metal catalysts reported in the literature. The high ethanol selectivity is attributed to the formation of K-Mo-Se active phase and the synergistic effect of the Mo IV , Mo V and Mo VI multivalent species in the active phase. This study opens up a highly selective non-noble metal catalyst system for the direct synthesis of ethanol by syngas, which is of practical significance for the catalytic conversion of hydrogen-poor syngas.