Liquid phase conversion of Glycerol to Propanediol over highly active Copper/Magnesia catalysts

In this work, a series of Cu/MgO catalysts with different copper metal loading were prepared by the precipitation-deposition method. Their catalytic behaviour was investigated for glycerol hydrogenolysis to 1,2-propanediol (1,2-PDO). The physico-chemical properties of the catalysts were characterized by various techniques such as BET surface area, X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature programmed reduction (TPR), NH3-temperature programmed desorption (NH3-TPD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) methods. The characterization results showed that the copper metal was well-dispersed over MgO support and a new phase Cu-MgO was also identified from XRD results after calcination. The 25Cu/MgO (Cu:25 wt%) catalyst exhibited the highest glycerol conversion of 88.7% and 1,2-PDO selectivity of 91.7% at 210(a similar to)C, 4.5 MPa of hydrogen pressure after 12 h. The high glycerol conversion was mainly due to the Cu dispersion on MgO support and high acidic strength. Further, the effects of temperature, hydrogen pressure, catalyst loading and glycerol concentration were studied over 25Cu/MgO catalyst for optimization of reaction parameters. Kinetic study over highly active 25Cu/MgO catalyst showed that the reaction followed the pseudo second order rate with respect to glycerol and the apparent activation energy was found to be 28.7 +/- 0.8 kcal/mol.