Efficient hydrogenolysis of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-dimethylfuran over Ni-C3N4 catalysts with ultra-low Ni loading
Selective hydrogenolysis of biomass-based platform compounds is of great importance for the pro-duction of chemicals and fuels.Herein,we reported that the catalyst of Ni-C3N4 supported on H2 activated carbon(HC)synthesized by a simple coordination-impregnation-pyrolysis method is efficient for the hydrogenolysis of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural(HMF)to 2,5-dimethylfuran(DMF);the yield of 94.2%can be obtained in a batch reactor and the lifetime of greater than 120 h can be achieved in fixed-bed experiment.It is demonstrated that Ni nanoparticles coated by graphitic C3N4 shell were highly dispersed on the surface of HC and the Ni loading is as low as 0.86 wt%,beneficial to the anti-sintering of Ni nanoparticles during the reaction.Both XPS characterizations and theo-retical calculations reveal that Ni3N is the intrinsic active component for the hydrogenolysis,which exhibits efficient activity for the dissociation of C-O bond.This work opens up a new avenue to develop catalysts with single non-noble metal component for the efficient conversion of bio-mass-based chemicals.