Higher alcohols can be used as fuels, fuel additives and feedstocks for value-added chemicals, and their synthesis from coal- or natural gas-derived syngas is the challenging and attractive subjects in the field of C1 chemistry. Unlike methanol synthesis, it requires both a dissociative and non-dissociative activations of CO. At the nano-scale, a suitable catalyst should display these two different functions to benefit higher alcohol formation. Typical catalyst system reported for HAS included modified methanol synthesis catalysts, Rh-based catalysts, modified Fischer-Tropsch catalysts, and Mo-based catalysts. However, great research efforts still need for commercial HAS process.Both CuFe- and molybdenum-based catalysts have been investigated at our lab since 1990s. Herein, some progress may shed a light into the development of catalyst towards the higher alcohol synthesis.   CuFe-based catalyst appeared a relatively high activity and selectivity to alcohols under mild reaction conditions. It was proposed that the production of higher alcohols required a synergetism between Fe and Cu. A homogeneous distribution of active sites and their interactions at nano-scale would be necessary for the high HAS selectivity. This was further supported by the performance of unsupported CuFe-bimetallic nanoparticles (NPs) as model catalyst by wet-reduction method. NPs led to a much high selectivity to C2+OH along with C6+OH.    Molybdenum-based catalysts included alkali-doped molybdenum sulfide and/or carbide for the co-production of mixed alcohols and towngas with resistance to S. The research focused on the preparation of molybdenum-based nanocatalysts with controllable porous structure, the size, local composition distribution to enhance the catalytic performance. As-obtained MoCx nanocatalysts with mesoporous structure showed much higher activity and stability, expecting to be a new generation catalyst for HAS.

Synthesis of higher alcohols via bifunctional catalysis

244th National Meeting (2012)

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