Experimental study for liquid phase selective hydrogenation of furfuryl alcohol to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol on supported Ni catalysts

The liquid phase hydrogenation of furfuryl alcohol (FA) to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol (THFA) on a series of new special supported Ni catalyst was experimentally studied while the raw material and the product were analyzed by a set of on-line GC. The reactor used in the experiment was a continuous stirred autoclave with volume of 500 mL. The operating conditions studied in the experiments were opted as the following ranges: temperature within 433–453 K, pressure within 3.0–4.0 MPa, catalyst loading 20 g/L and the stirring rate at about 1000 rpm. The experimental results show that, under the operation conditions mentioned above, the hydrogenation of FA in the presence of the catalyst QD3 can lead to a high FA conversion above 99.9% and a high selectivity of THFA higher than 98.3% within 3.5 h.