Study Of Copper-based Catalysts Prepared By Coprecipitation Method For Hydrogenation Of Ethyl Acetate To Ethanol

As a potential alternative to oil, ethanol fuel has become a hot topic in the economic, political, environmental, and scientific areas. The acetic acid esterification hydrogenation method has been proposed as a new way in manufacturing the ethanol. However, the esterification of acetic acid into ethyl acetate is already a mature technology, thus, the key process of this technical route is to develop catalysts for hydrogenation of ethyl acetate to ethanol, and much attention is focused on it in this paper. A series of chrome-free copper-based catalysts are prepared by coprecipitation method, and they are systematically investigated in this work. In the fixed-bed micro-reactor for catalytic reaction, the promoters of catalysts, precipitants, molar ratio of Cu/Zn, support content, calcination temperature and reaction conditions, such as reduction temperature, reaction temperature, reaction pressure and so on, are optimized screening to make the catalysts reach the highest activity. The best catalytic performance is obtained over the optimal catalyst with an ethyl acetate conversion of 95.0% and ethanol selectivity of 99%. These precurors and catalysts are characterized by ICP-AES, XRD, H2-TPR, TEM, XPS and so on. The texture, composition, and structure of the catalysts are investigated to analyze the influence of preparation conditions on the catalysts. Moreover, the mechanism of ethyl acetate hydrogenolysis reaction over the optimal catalyst is described.