Photocatalytic production of chemicals from biomass

Furfural (FF) has recently been considered to be one of the most appealing model molecules among the biomass feedstock. One of the most promising upgrading methods for FF is heterogeneous photocatalysis. To this end, the following thesis work is divided into three parts: The first part of the work is focused on the hydrogenation of FF to produce FA over pure TiO2 prepared from the microemulsion method with different calcination temperatures. The hydrogenation ability of these catalysts has been verified and compared. It has been found that the TiO2 with a calcination temperature of 400 °C had the best hydrogenation performance with a > 90% yield of FA. The outperformance of 400-TiO2-m_A is related to its suitable crystallinity, specific surface area and particle size. Furthermore, a hydrogen transfer reaction pathway has been proposed based on the analysis of both liquid and gas-phase products. The second part of the work is focused to the acetalization of FF to produce furaldehyde diethyl acetal (FDA) on various Pd/g-C3N4. The results have indicated that the Pd/g-C3N4 prepared with photo-deposition (PD) with a real loading of 2.8% possesses the best acetalization ability (yield of FDA up to 80%). This has been attributed to the presence of suitable amount of Pd-H and Pd2+. The third part of the work is in its initial stage and inspired by the conclusion from the second part. In this chapter, the hydrogenation of FF to generate FA was conducted over various Au loaded TiO2. The results suggest that the 1.5 wt.% Au/TiO2 prepared with PD with a particle size of 13 nm obtained the best hydrogenation ability (yield of FA up to 80%), this was attributed to the presence of suitable amount of AuOx.