Solvent-free fabrication of Ni2P/UiO-66 catalyst for the hydrogenation of furfural to cyclopentanone

Abstract

Dispersing the metal phosphides on the supports with large surface areas would be a feasible way to boost the catalytic hydrogenation performance. However, as a kind of very promising porous materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have rarely been used to load the metal phosphides for the harsh synthesis conditions of metal phosphides. This work demonstrated a facile and solvent-free method to construct a highly dispersed Ni2P/UiO-66 catalyst (the particle size of Ni2P is 2.9 nm). In this method, nickel precursor was loaded on UiO-66 by simple ball milling, then phosphating to obtain the Ni2P/UiO-66 catalysts by using sodium hypophosphite at 300 oC. This solvent-free process in line with the concept of green synthesis. In addition, the prepared Ni2P/UiO-66 showed good catalytic performance for the hydrogenation of furfural to cyclopentanone, with 97.5% yield of cyclopentanone under the conditions of 0.5 MPa H2, 150 oC, 10 h.