Synthesis of Ru, Ni and Fe supported graphene nanoplatelets catalysts for hydrogenation of glucose into sorbitol

Non-covalent method of graphene nanoplatelets’ functionalization using the pyrene-tagged Ru, Ni and Fe precursors developed in this work offers an easy way to prepare bimetallic catalysts with different metal ratio and different compositions as Ni-Ru, Fe-Ru and Ni-Fe. First, four different metallic precursors were synthetized: Ni (0), Ni (II), Fe and Ru. Then, 16 different catalysts were prepared and fully characterized by ICP, XPS, XRD and TEM. All catalysts were then tested in the catalytic reaction of the hydrogenation of glucose into sorbitol. The ruthenium supported catalyst with 2.23 wt% shows a good conversion (66%) of glucose and high sorbitol selectivity (74%) at 160 °C under 30 bar H2 pressure during 2 h. The non-noble metallic catalysts Ni and Fe show very low conversion and selectivity. However, the combination of these two metals shows good results: 58% of glucose conversion and 40% of sorbitol selectivity obtained with 4.12 wt% in both metals.