A facile method to synthesis a mesoporous carbon supported methanol catalyst containing well dispersed Cu/ZnO

•A simple and low-waste impregnation method has been developed for preparing methanol synthesis catalyst.•The prepared catalyst contains well dispersed active components.•The catalyst synthesis method is an eco-friendly way which successfully avoided generates nitrate contaminated waste water.

Alumina supported CuO/ZnO is the commercial catalyst for methanol synthesis from syngas. Though so far, this catalyst has been regarded as the dominant catalyst for methanol synthesis. The catalyst is still facing some fundamental challenges such as the dispersion of active center CuO/ZnO. Meanwhile, to prepare this catalyst, large amount of nitrate precursor was used and produced lots of environmentally harmful wastewater. In the current work, a bimodal carbon channel-confined CuO/ZnO supported on mesoporous carbon catalyst was synthesized by using a simple impregnation method followed by ammonia hydrolysis and pyrolysis. The results demonstrated that the method we developed was an effective way to control the dispersion of metal oxides particles.

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