Facilitating Pt-WOx Species Interaction for Efficient Glycerol Hydrogenolysis to 1,3-Propanediol

Designing efficient catalysts for glycerol hydrogenolysis to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO), which involves the selective cleavage of the secondary C-O bond, is a challenging task. Current Pt-WOx-based catalysts often provide low atom efficiency of W and Pt toward 1,3-PDO production due to undesired catalyst structures. Herein, we fabricate the highly-dispersed substantially uniform WOx species on inert alpha-Al2O3 support by simple high-temperature heat-treatment, and the amount of Pt-WOx interface active sites could be adjusted by Pt loading, showing an excellent catalytic performance in glycerol hydrogenolysis at high concentration of glycerol, especially the unprecedented W efficiency (76 g(1,3-PDO)g(W)(-1) h(-1)) toward 1,3-PDO. The high catalytic efficiency is attributed to the strong interaction between the isolated WO4 species and platinum, which could in-situ generate the Bronsted acid sites during the reaction as evidenced by IR analysis with NH3 adsorption.