A Cu, Zn-Decorated N-Doped Carbon Matrix with Abundant Lewis Acid and Base Sites for Efficient Transfer Hydrogenation of Furfural to Furfuryl Alcohol

Selective reduction of biomass-derived compounds via the catalytic transfer hydrogenation (CTH) route is a cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach for upgrading biomass resources to value-added chemicals. Herein, a Cu, Zn-decorated N-doped carbon matrix (Cu/Zn@NC) is constructed using a zeolitic imidazolate framework-derived strategy for the CTH of furfural (FF) to furfuryl alcohol (FAL). The Cu/Zn@NC-600 catalyst shows optimal catalytic activity and robust stability. When using isopropanol as the H donor, the FF conversion reaches almost 100% and the FAL yield is as high as 96.78%. Combined with structure characterizations and control experiments, the high activity of Cu/Zn@NC-600 is speculated to mainly derive from the high dispersion of metal nanoparticles and the synergetic effect between Lewis acid (Cu(I)) and base (pyridinic-N) sites. Additionally, the Cu/Zn@NC-600 catalyst exhibits robust stability in the CTH reaction on FF for five cycles. This work provides a simple method to obtain highly efficient and stable CTH catalysts, which is of great significance for the hydrogenation of biomass compounds.