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Catalytic conversion of glycerol to lactic acid has been considered as one of the effective ways to solve the problem of glycerol surplus. In this paper, we reported a facile synthesis of Cu/ZnO/C by direct calcination of Cu-supported zeolitic imidazolate framework(ZIF-8), and the performance of the catalysts for converting glycerol to lactic acid were investigated. The properties of Cu/ZnO/C catalysts were characterized by XRD, BET, SEM and TG techniques. The results showed that nano-copper was distributed uniformly on the porous carbon carrier. The zinc oxide after thermal treatment provided abundant metal active sites and had synergistic effect with nano copper. In addition, the lactic acid selectivity of 84% was obtained at the glycerol conversion of 95.1% at 230 °C, 1.5 MPa and 15% copper loading for 6 h reaction. Moreover, the yield of lactic acid still remained above 80% after being recycled four times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, precious metal catalysts or toxic copper-chromium catalysts are widely used in the catalytic hydrogenation of furfural. In this study, the selective hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol was performed over alumina-carbon matrix embedded Ni nanoparticles catalyst. The Ni-loaded metal organic framework precursors were synthesized by reverse microemulsion method (water in oil), then the Ni/Al2O3–C catalysts were obtained by pyrolysis under a nitrogen atmosphere. Various characterizations including XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, TPR, TPD and TG were carried out to reveal the microstructure and chemical composition of the prepared samples. The results showed that the hexagonal platelet structure and the smaller nickel nanoparticle size(~ 8 nm) benefits from the alumina–carbon matrix support, which helped the uniform dispersion and prevented it from accumulation at high temperatures. In addition, the catalyst performance was greatly affected by the calcination conditions and metal loading. At optimized operating conditions, 98.7% conversion of furfural and 92% yield of furfuryl alcohol could be achieved over Ni0.15/Al2O3–C catalyst in the liquid phase hydrogenation reaction with a good reusability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]