Catalytic hydrogenolysis of hydroxymethylfurfural to highly selective 2,5-dimethylfuran over FeCoNi/h-BN catalyst

Nowadays, the production of high-quality liquid fuels gains increasing attentions because of the gradual decrease of fossil resources. Herein, a non-noble catalyst for selectively converting hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) was proposed. The catalyst is characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and temperature-programmed reduction (TPR). It can be confirmed that the awaruite (Ni-Fe alloy) was formed, meanwhile the awaruite and Co species are uniformly dispersed on the surface of boron nitride via the deposition precipitation method. Under the optimized reaction conditions, the yield of DMF was about 94.0% over Fe-Co-Ni/h-BN catalyst. The catalyst is reused ten times with complete conversion of HMF and slight decrease of DMF yield (still above 82.0% DMF yield), indicative of unprecedented reusability for this heterogeneous catalyst.