Natural attapulgite supported nano-Ni catalysts for the efficient reductive amination of biomass-derived aldehydes and ketones

The efficient synthesis of useful primary amines via reductive amination of biomass-based aldehydes and ketones over earth-abundant base metal catalysts is an attractive biomass value-adding technology yet facing lots of challenges. Herein, natural attapulgite (ATP) was applied as support for the fabrication of active Ni catalysts with different Ni loadings (5–30 ​wt%) by the deposition-precipitation method. The Ni/ATP-550 catalyst with 10–15 ​wt% Ni loadings was found to present the highest catalytic performance for the synthesis of valuable 5-amino-1-pentanol (5-AP) via reductive amination of biofurfural-derived 2-hydroxytetrahydropyran among a variety of commonly used oxide supports loaded Ni catalysts, as well as ATP supported nickel catalysts with other loadings, achieving 5-AP yield up to 94%. The intrinsic activity of the Ni/ATP catalysts was found to depend strongly on the Ni⁰ crystallite size and Ni⁰ fraction of the catalysts, which generally increased with increasing Ni⁰ crystallite size and fraction, owing probably to the hydrogenation of imine intermediate is a structure-sensitive reaction. The efficient 10Ni/ATP-550 catalyst also exhibited good activity and stability in the reductive amination of several other biomass-derived aldehydes and ketones to their corresponding primary amines with good to excellent yields (81%–99%). This work provided a clean and efficient natural ATP-supported non-noble metal nickel-based catalytic system for the reductive amination of aldehydes and ketones to synthesize high-value-added primary amines, which could be a promising candidate for the industrial production of amines.