Preparation and catalytic properties of Ni(Co)-W-B amorphous catalysts for 4-cresol hydrodeoxygenation

Ni-W-B and Co-W-B amorphous catalysts were prepared by chemical reduction. The resulting materials were characterized by BET, XRD and XPS, and the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) performances of the catalysts were tested using 4-cresol as the model compound. The results showed that both of the two catalysts were amorphous structure. They showed high deoxygenation activity in the HDO of 4-cresol. However, in the HDO of 4-cresol at 523 K, Ni-W-B had high hydrogenation activity, showing 100.0% conversion of 4-cresol, 55.1% selectivity to 4-methylcyclohexanol and 44.1% of selectivity to deoxygenation. Co-W-B showed high activity of deoxygenation and the selectivity of deoxygenation was as high as 93.1%. It was mainly attributed to the different composition content of different elements with different valence states on the surface of the catalysts. Both of 4-cresol conversion and selectivity to deoxygenation could reach 100% over them at the conditions of 573 K and 4.0 MPa of hydrogen.