非贵金属Co-N-C/MgO高效催化糠醛氧化酯化制糠酸甲酯

设计开发绿色、可持续的生物质资源高效转化制化学品催化过程具有重要的科学与应用研究价值.生物质基平台分子糠醛在分子氧存在下与甲醇发生氧化酯化,提供了一条糠酸甲酯的"非石油基"合成新路线.该反应采用贵金属/非贵金属催化体系,目前通常需要引入K2CO3或CH3ONa等碱性添加剂,以提高催化氧化酯化反应活性和选择性;但是存在活性组分流失、生成副产物及污染环境等问题,阻碍了其进一步应用.探索高性能非贵金属催化剂,实现无碱条件下糠醛高效氧化酯化,对于提高该生物质路线竞争力与推动工业化进程具有重要意义.

High-efficiency oxidative esterification of furfural to methylfuroate with a non-precious metal Co-N-C/MgO catalyst

From both fundamental and practical perspectives, the production of chemicals from biomass re-sources using high-efficiency non-precious metal catalysts is important. However, many processes require addition of stoichiometric or excess quantities of base, which leads to high energy consump-tion, leaching problems, and side reactions. In this study, we investigated the high-efficiency oxida-tive esterification of furfural to methylfuroate by molecular oxygen with a Co-N-C/MgO catalyst. The catalyst was prepared by direct pyrolysis of a cobalt(II) phenanthroline complex on MgO at 800 ℃ under N2 atmosphere. From furfural, 93.0%conversion and 98.5%selectivity toward methylfuroate were achieved under 0.5 MPa O2 with reaction at 100 ℃ for 12 h without a basic additive. The con-version and selectivity were much higher than those obtained with cobalt catalysts produced by pyrolysis of a cobalt(II) phenanthroline complex on activated carbon or typical basic supports, in-cluding NaX, NaY, and CaO. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission elec-tron microscopy, and experimental results revealed that the high efficiency of Co-N-C/MgO for pro-duction of methylfuroate was closely related to the cobalt-nitrogen-doped carbon species and its catalytic ability in hydrogen abstraction. In contrast, Co-N-C(HCl) that synthesized by removing MgO with HCl from Co-N-C/MgO, as the catalyst produced mainly an acetal as a condensation prod-uct, and chloride ions had a negative effect on the oxidative esterification. Although the catalytic performance of the cobalt-nitrogen-doped carbon species was greatly affected by HCl treatment, it could be recovered to a great extent by addition of MgO. Moreover, changes in the oxygen pressure hardly affected the oxidative esterification of furfural with Co-N-C/MgO. This study not only pro-vides an effective approach to prepare methylfuroate, but also for designing high-performance non-precious metal catalysts for the oxidative esterification of biomass-derived compounds.