Zeolite-Encapsulated Ni Catalyst for the Direct Conversion of Mono- and Polysaccharides to Ethylene Glycol
Date
2025-04-25
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering
Abstract
We have developed a simple, scalable, postsynthetic treatment for the encapsulation of Ni nanoparticles inside MFI zeolites as size-selective hydrogenation catalysts. We show that size-selective sieving of glucose from glycolaldehyde by the Ni-MFI-type zeolites enables an improvement in ethylene glycol yield by minimizing sorbitol and mannitol formation. This property is applied for the direct conversion of glucose to ethylene glycol, which can achieve 63% yield with less than 2% sugar alcohols in batch operation at lower reaction temperatures than previously reported (170 °C vs 230 °C). This improvement in size selectivity and yield can be extended to polysaccharides. The impacts of catalyst loadings, temperature, pH, and substrate concentration were studied, and optimal conditions for high selectivity were identified for both glucose and starch.
Description
This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c00915.
This article will be embargoed until 04/25/2026.
Keywords
biomass, tandem catalysis, size-selectivity, retro-aldol reaction, hydrogenation, zeolite, encapsulation
Citation
Surendhran, Roshaan, Marat Orazov, and Raul F. Lobo. “Zeolite-Encapsulated Ni Catalyst for the Direct Conversion of Mono- and Polysaccharides to Ethylene Glycol.” ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, April 25, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c00915.