Novel Nanocatalyst for the Selective Hydrogenation of Bio-Oil Model Compounds

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the understanding the effect of various factors, such as physical structures of metal particles, chemical composition of supports and metal-support interactions, on the catalytic performance of Pd or Pt nanocatalysts for hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of bio-oil model compounds. The first part of the thesis addressed the alternative catalyst synthesis strategy based on emerging double-flame spray pyrolysis method (FSP), which was able to tune the catalytic properties of nanocatalysts without changing their precursors and chemical compositions during the synthesis. A series of Pd catalysts on the silica-alumina supports, SiO2- , and Al2O3 supports have been synthesized with the tunable surface properties within micro-seconds. The characterization results showed that various flow rates of precursors and gases used for the synthesis of catalysts influenced the formation of the catalyst structures and further change the surface acidity of catalysts due to the correlation between acidity and structure, but, the flow rates did not influence the electronic properties of Pd particles. Therefore, the higher conversion but the similar chemoselectivity have been reached in the hydrogenation of the bio-oil model ketone compound-acetophenone The second part is to identify the dominant effects from size of metal catalysts (under uniform shape and face) or the support acidity in the hydrodeoxygenation of the bio-oil model compounds of acetophenone, benzaldehyde, and butyrophenone. The uniform cubic Pd particles with different size (8, 13, and 21 nm) have been synthesized and loaded on the most popular supports (SiO2-, Al2O3-, and silica-alumina) with various functional groups and acidity. The results showed different acidities on the supports (Brønsted acidic site for Silica-alumina, Lewis acidic site for Al2O3-, and non/weak silanol OH group for SiO2- support) could not influence the chemoselectivity of the reaction but effected the conversion obviously. The particle size has more significant influence than the acidity. The smallest (8nm) Pd particle catalysts regardless of kinds of supports revealed the highest conversion for the hydrogenation the bio-oil model compounds. The third part focused on the influence of various types of catalysts with different acidities, chemical composition, and metal-support interaction on enantioselective hydrogenation of several model compounds in two reaction systems: 1). Pt-cinchrona modified system, and 2). Pd-(S) proline modified system. The result indicated acidic supports promoted the both conversion and enantioselectivity. Specially, Pd/SA made by double-FSP method, which has the highest Brønsted acid sites, showed 100 % conversion of isopherone on 60 min with 99% ee values.