Catalytic Hydrogenation of Methyl Acetate to Ethanol over Boron Doped Carbon Aerogels Supported Cu Catalyst

The hydrogenation of methyl acetate (MA) is a crucial step to obtain ethanol from coal-syngas indirectly. In this paper, boron doped carbon aerogel (BCAs) has been prepared successfully and applied as support for copper-base catalyst due to its unique physicochemical properties. The influence of boron on copper-based catalysts Cu/xBCAs (x=1, 3, 5) for the hydrogenation of methyl acetate (MA) to ethanol is studied systematically. H-2-N2O and XRD prove that appropriate amount of boron not only improves the dispersion of active copper species, but also achieves the higher percentage of Cu(+)in (Cu++Cu-0). The catalyst Cu/3BCAs performs the best catalytic activity with methyl acetate (MA) conversion of 90.6 % and ethanol selectivity of 59.9 %, respectively. The high catalytic activity comes from the highest proportion of Cu(+)on the Cu/3BCAs due to the lower reducibility of Cu(+)species caused by the relatively high affinity of boron with electrons.