Synthesis of Furfuryl Alcohol via Selective Hydrogenation of Furfural in the Presence of Iron-Containing Catalysts

Cu- and Fe-containing catalysts were studied in the reaction of selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol (FA). The catalysts were prepared by fusing the metal nitrates and reduced in situ at 250 °C in the reactor before the reaction. A batch reactor was used for the process at 150 °C and 6.0 MPa of hydrogen. The highest activity was shown to be characteristic of the Cu20Fe66Al14catalyst that provided 96 % conversion of furfural and 97 mol.% selectivity to FA. In the flow system, the furfural conversion reached 100 % and the selectivity to FA up to 95 mol.% at 160 °C and 5 MPa of hydrogen. The developed catalyst remained highly active during its continuous operation for 30 hours. The observed high activity was accounted for by the presence of stabilized disperse copper particles in the copper-iron containing catalyst.

Effect of temperature on the electrodeposition of disperse copper deposits

The effect of temperature on the electrodeposition of copper at overpotentials belonging to the plateau of the limiting diffusion current density and higher was examined by the determination of the average current efficiency of hydrogen evolution and by scanning electron microscopic (SEM) analysis of the morphology of the formed copper deposits. Increasing the temperature of the solution led to a shift of both the beginning and the end of the plateau of the limiting diffusion current density towards lower electrodeposition overpotentials. Also, higher temperatures led to the formation of morphological forms of copper deposits characteristic for electrodeposition of copper at some higher overpotentials. The unexpected trend in the development of copper structures electrodeposited at an overpotential of 800 mV is discussed in terms of the effect of temperature on the viscosity and surface tension of the electroplating solution.

Simple One-Step Synthesis of Uniform Disperse Copper Nanoparticles

In this paper, we describe a simple and rapid solution-phase chemical reduction method with no inert gas protection, for preparing stable copper nanoparticle colloid with average particle size of 3.4 nm and narrow size distribution. In our synthesis route, ascorbic acid, natural vitamin C (VC), serves as both a reducing agent and an antioxidant to reduce copper salt precursor and effectively prevent the general oxidation process occurring to the newborn nanoparticles. XRD and UV/vis confirm the formation of pure face-centered cubic (fcc) copper nanoparticles and the excellent antioxidant ability of ascorbic acid.