Micro-/mesopores confined ultrasmall Cu nanoparticles in SBA-15 as a highly efficient and robust catalyst for furfural hydrogenation to furfuryl alcohol

The main difficulty in the liquid phase furfural hydrogenation process is the control of the selectivity to the target product among the possible ones. When copper catalysts are used, they often suffer from low stability in liquid medium. Herein, we report a general preparation method based on glycine-assisted in situ autocombustion to synthesize Cu supported catalysts. This method could lead to highly active, selective and stable catalysts in the liquid phase furfural hydrogenation. The resulting 10Cu-SBA-GLY catalyst (10 wt% Cu on SBA-15) could achieve a complete conversion of furfural to furfuryl alcohol under mild reaction conditions. Further, neither Cu leaching nor Cu NPs sintering were observed during the 5-run recycling tests, and the loss of conversion and selectivity stays below 3%. Such exceptional features make these Cu-SBA-GLY catalysts potential for the industrial applications not only in furfural hydrogenation but also in other hydroconversion processes. • A low-cost and robust Cu/SBA-15 catalyst was applied for furfural hydrogenation to furfuryl alcohol. • Furfuryl alcohol was produced with 100% yield under mild reaction conditions. • The glycine assisted autocombustion method resulted in high thermal resistance of copper phase. • The high activity of Cu/SBA-15 was retained after 5 cycles.