Effect of Lewis and Bronsted acidity in Ni/ZSM-5 on catalytic reductive etherification of furfural and alcohols

Reductive etherification is an attractive and practical strategy to convert bio-platform compounds into valuable chemicals. In directed synthesis of furfuryl ethers, reductive etherification of bioderived furfurals is still chal-lenging due to the complexity of catalytic reaction. Herein, reductive etherification of furfural with alcohol was investigated over Ni/ZSM-5 catalyst, which found that Si/Al ratios in ZSM-5 played an important role on the catalytic performance. For Ni/ZSM-5 with Si/Al ratio of 50, 80.9% yield of furfuryl ether at 90.8% conversion of furfural was achieved under the condition of 2 MPa H2 and 180 degrees C for 3 h in isopropanol. The catalyst exhibited superior stability and recyclability during the consecutive cycle run. Catalysts characterization demonstrated that both acidic properties and furfural adsorption were influenced by the Si/Al ratios in Ni/ZSM-5, which correlated to the reaction route and catalytic performance. Lewis acid sites enhanced furfural hydrogenation into furfuryl alcohol, while Bronsted acid sites on ZSM-5 effectively catalyzed sequential etherification of furfuryl alcohol to furfuryl ether. Under optimization conditions, various furfuryl ethers could be obtained with yields above 80% over Ni/ZSM-5 catalyst in different primary alcohols, demonstrating the general versatility of the approach. Our findings offered opportunities to develop an efficient furfuryl ethers synthesis method.