Enhanced stability of tungsten carbide catalysts via superhydrophobic modification for one-pot conversion of biomass-derived fructose involving water and iodine

Developing cost-effective and high-performance catalysts in biomass chemistry is motivated by creating sustainable technologies dependent on inexpensive and abundant resources. The existing methods for the direct preparation of 5-methylfurfural (5-MF) from biomass-derived fructose mediated by hydrogen iodide (HI) mainly require precious metal catalysts. This research showed that low-cost tungsten carbide (WC) was capable to produce HI from iodine (I2) via liquid-phase hydrogenation, but a pivotal limitation was the poor stability under the combination effects of water and I2. To solve this problem, the bulk WC and the high dispersion supported WC were modified by hydrophobic organosilicones through simple liquid phase deposition. Both of the two superhydrophobic WC materials had better stability and their catalytic activity were comparable to the expensive palladium-carbon (Pd/C) catalyst in the preparation of 5-MF, especially the superhydrophobic high dispersion supported WC. This work highlights the potential of the low-cost WC with simple superhydrophobic modification in assisting the direct preparation of 5-MF from fructose mediated by HI, which has high significance to the sustainable development of the low-cost biomass chemical engineering.