Chinese researchers successfully prepared new biomass energy catalysts

Recently, the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Hefei Institute of Material Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made new progress in the catalytic conversion of biomass. Researchers have prepared a highly dispersed copper-based catalyst to convert low-cost biomass resources into bio-oil and chemical products. Foundation. The authoritative academic journal "SMALL" in the field of international materials has published this achievement.

Biomass refers to various organisms formed by photosynthesis, including animals and plants and microorganisms. As a kind of renewable resources with abundant reserves, its conversion and utilization has broad application prospects.

Biomass is a kind of renewable resource with abundant reserves, but because of its high oxygen content, it cannot directly replace fossil fuels. In the chemical industry, hydrodeoxygenation is recognized as the most effective way to improve the quality of biomass fuels and to obtain high value-added chemicals. However, the active components of current hydrogenation catalysts depend on precious metals such as palladium, platinum, gold, ruthenium, etc., and low reserves result in high cost, which severely limits their large-scale applications.

Recently, researchers at the Center for Environmental and Energy Nanomaterials of the Institute of Solid State Physics have used a one-step carbothermal reduction method to prepare highly dispersed copper-based catalysts. The catalyst consists of copper nanoparticles uniformly embedded in a carbon matrix. Experiments show that the catalyst has high conversion and selectivity under different conditions and has excellent stability.

According to reports, this copper-based catalyst preparation method is simple, environmentally friendly , easy to scale production and promotion, and lays a foundation for the realization of low-cost conversion of biomass resources into bio-oil and chemical products.