Effect of tungsten surface density of WO3-ZrO2 on its catalytic performance in hydrogenolysis of cellulose to ethylene glycol

One-pot hydrogenolysis of cellulose to ethylene glycol (EG) was carried out on WO3-based catalysts combined with Ru/C. To probe the active catalytic site for breaking the C-C bond of cellulose, a series of WO3-ZrO2 (WZr) catalysts were synthesized and systematically characterized with XRD, Raman, UV-Vis, H-2-TPR, DRIFS and XPS techniques and N-2 physisorption experiment. It was found that the WO3 crystallites became more easily reduced to W5+-OH species with increasing crystallite size or tungsten surface density of the WZr catalyst owing to the decrease of their absorption edge energy (AEE) originating from weakening their interaction with ZrO2 support. This, as a result, gave higher EG yield at higher tungsten surface density. The structure-activity relationship of the WZr catalyst reveals that the active catalytic site for cleaving the C-2-C-3 bond of the glucose molecule is the W5+-OH species.