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Emerging Trends in Chemical Engineering

TiO2-ZrO2 Supported Nickel Oxide Catalysts for Hydrogenation of Levulinic Acid to -Valerolcatone

  1. V R Chary Komandur
  2. Putrakumar Balla
  3. Ramu Kuna
  4. Pethan Rajan N
  5. Umesh Kumar Utkoor

Abstract

The Titania-Zirconia (TZ) mixed oxide sample (50:50 wt.% percent) was prepared by a simple coprecipitation method and used as a support for the nickel catalyst. The various loadings of nickel content from 1 to 20 wt.% were synthesized for the production of γ-valerolactone (GVL) from levulinic acid (LA). Among all the tested samples, the 5 wt.% Ni/TZ sample exhibited the 98% conversion of LA and 96% selectivity to GVL and the stability of the catalyst was also constant up to TOS of 15 h under the optimized reaction conditions i.e., 260°C, 10 wt.% of LA and 1 atm H2 pressure. The results of XRD and UV-DRS reveal that uniform and small nickel oxide particles are uniformly distributed on the catalyst surface at low nickel loadings and high nickel loadings it exists as agglomerated nickel oxide particles. The hydrogen chemisorption analysis result also confirms the above findings.
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