Effect of calcination temperature on the structure and properties of Raney-Ni catalyst for hydrogenation of 1, 4-butenediol

Ni-Al alloy powder was impregnated with copper nitrate solution, and calcined at different temperatures to obtain Cu-modified Ni-Al alloy powder. The modified alloy powder was leached with a 10% (mass ratio) NaOH solution to obtain the Cu/Raney-Ni catalyst. Elemental composition, crystal structure, pore structure, surface morphology and surface acidity of the Ni-Al alloy powder and corresponding Raney-Ni catalysts were characterized by EDX, XRD, N₂ adsorption-desorption, TEM and NH₃-TPD. The hydrogenation performance of the Raney-Ni catalysts were evaluated using the reaction of 1, 4-butenediol (BED) hydrogenation to 1, 4-butanediol (BDO) as the probe reaction. The characteristic results showed that the CRT500 catalyst prepared at the calcination temperature of 500 ℃ presented larger specific surface area of 64.96 m²/g, and the proportion of weak acid sites was high of 81.2%. The reaction results proposed that the reactant of BED could be completely converted, and the selectivity and yield of BDO increased firstly and then decreased as the calcination temperature increased. The CRT500 catalyst presented good hydrogenation performance, with BED conversion of 100.00%, BDO selectivity of 61.88%, while the BDO selectivity of the RCT550 and RCT600 were lower, which might be due to the agglomeration or sintering of the catalyst at higher calcination temperature. The CRT500 catalyst showed excellent hydrogenation performance, which might be attributed to the appropriate molar ratio of Ni/Al (3.84), the large proportion of weak acid sites and good dispersion of active component Ni.