A new reduction method based on simultaneous Ti3AlC2 support etching and metal deposition to prepare Pt catalysts for aqueous-phase selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol.

Supported Pt catalysts play an important role in selective hydrogenation reactions for upgrading bio-derived chemicals, and they are traditionally prepared by methods such as deposition–precipitation (DP), wet impregnation (WI) and chemical reduction (CR) using NaBH4 and H2 under thermal conditions. This study developed a new reduction method to produce supported Pt NPs on nanofibers, in which Ti3AlC2 (a typical MAX phase) and chloroplatinic acid (H2PtCl6) were employed as raw materials, using as-produced H2 as a reducing agent under hydrothermal synthetic conditions. In the selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol, the newly-developed catalyst of Pt2.0/Ti3AlxC2Ty exhibited high furfural (FUR) conversion (86.3%) and excellent furfuryl alcohol (FA) selectivity (98.1%) under optimized reaction conditions of 600 rpm, 100 °C, 3 h, and 1 MPa H2 in aqueous media. Moreover, these fibrous catalysts exhibited strong reusability and recyclability for five runs without loss of activity and selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]