Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural Promoted by a Ru1 Cu Single-Atom Alloy Catalyst

Kaiyue Ji; Ming Xu; Si-Min Xu; Ye Wang; Ruixiang Ge; Xiaoyu Hu; Xiaoming Sun; Haohong Duan

doi:10.1002/anie.202209849

Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural Promoted by a Ru₁ Cu Single-Atom Alloy Catalyst

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Sep 12;61(37):e202209849. doi: 10.1002/anie.202209849. Epub 2022 Aug 4.

Authors

Kaiyue Ji¹, Ming Xu², Si-Min Xu², Ye Wang¹, Ruixiang Ge¹, Xiaoyu Hu³, Xiaoming Sun², Haohong Duan^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Chemistry, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
³ SINOPEC (Beijing) Research Institute of Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., Beijing, 100013, China.
⁴ Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Tianjin, 300192, China.

PMID: 35876073
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202209849

Abstract

Electrochemical reduction of biomass-derived 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) represents an elegant route toward sustainable value-added chemicals production that circumvents the use of fossil fuel and hydrogen. However, the reaction efficiency is hampered by the high voltage and low activity of electrodes (Cu, Bi, Pb). Herein, we report a Ru₁ Cu single-atom alloy (SAA) catalyst with isolated Ru atoms on Cu nanowires that exhibits an electrochemical reduction of HMF to 2,5-dihydroxymethylfuran (DHMF) with promoted productivity (0.47 vs. 0.08 mmol cm^-2 h^-1 ) and faradic efficiency (FE) (85.6 vs. 71.3 %) at -0.3 V (vs. RHE) compared with Cu counterpart. More importantly, the FE (87.5 %) is largely retained at high HMF concentration (100 mM). Kinetic studies by using combined electrochemical techniques suggest disparate mechanisms over Ru₁ Cu and Cu, revealing that single-atom Ru promotes the dissociation of water to produce H* species that effectively react with HMF via an electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) mechanism.

Keywords: 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural; Biomass Upgrading; Electrocatalysis; Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation; Single-Atom Alloy.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Alloys*
Furaldehyde* / analogs & derivatives
Hydrogenation
Kinetics

Substances

Alloys
5-hydroxymethylfurfural
Furaldehyde