Cu/ZIF-8 Derived Cu/ZnO/C Catalysts for Efficient Conversion of Glycerol to Lactic Acid.

Catalytic conversion of glycerol to lactic acid has been considered as one of the effective ways to solve the problem of glycerol surplus. In this paper, we reported a facile synthesis of Cu/ZnO/C by direct calcination of Cu-supported zeolitic imidazolate framework(ZIF-8), and the performance of the catalysts for converting glycerol to lactic acid were investigated. The properties of Cu/ZnO/C catalysts were characterized by XRD, BET, SEM and TG techniques. The results showed that nano-copper was distributed uniformly on the porous carbon carrier. The zinc oxide after thermal treatment provided abundant metal active sites and had synergistic effect with nano copper. In addition, the lactic acid selectivity of 84% was obtained at the glycerol conversion of 95.1% at 230 °C, 1.5 MPa and 15% copper loading for 6 h reaction. Moreover, the yield of lactic acid still remained above 80% after being recycled four times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]