A smart strategy to fabricate Ru nanoparticle inserted porous carbon nanofibers as highly efficient levulinic acid hydrogenation catalysts

Herein, we first put forward a smart strategy to in situ fabricate Ru nanoparticle (NP) inserted porous carbon nanofibers by one-pot conversion of Ru-functionalized metal organic framework fibers. Such fiber precursors are skillfully constructed by cooperative assembly of different proportional RuCl3 and Zn(Ac)(2)center dot 2H(2)O along with trimesic acid (H3BTC) in the presence of N, N-dimethylformamide. The following high-temperature pyrolysis affords uniform and evenly dispersed Ru NPs (ca. 12-16 nm), which are firmly inserted into the hierarchically porous carbon nanofibers formed simultaneously. The resulting Ru-carbon nanofiber (Ru-CNF) catalysts prove to be active towards the liquid-phase hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA) to gamma-valerolactone (GVL), a biomass-derived platform molecule with wide applications in the preparation of renewable chemicals and liquid transportation fuels. The optimal GVL yield of 96.0% is obtained, corresponding to a high activity of 9.56 molLA h(-1) g(Ru)(-1), 18 times that of using the commercial Ru/C catalyst. Moreover, the Ru-CNF catalyst is extremely stable, and can be cycled up to 7 times without significant loss of reactivity. Our strategy demonstrated here reveals new possibilities to make proficient metal catalysts, and provides a general way to fabricate metal-carbon nanofiber composites available for other applications.