Frustrated Lewis pair catalyst realizes efficient green diesel production.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38609373.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47591-z and PMC identifier 11015034.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Hydrotreating renewable oils over sulfided metal catalysts is commercially applied to produce green diesel, but it requires a continuous sulfur replenishment to maintain catalyst activity, which inevitably results in sulfur contamination and increases production costs. We report a robust P-doped NiAl-oxide catalyst with frustrated Lewis pairs (i.e., P atom bonded with the O atom acts as an electron donor, while the spatially separated Ni atom acts as an electron acceptor) that allows efficient green diesel production without sulfur replenishment. The catalyst runs more than 500 h at a weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) of 28.3 h<sup>-1</sup> without deactivation (methyl laurate as a model compound), and is able to completely convert a real feedstock of soybean oil to diesel-range hydrocarbons with selectivity >90% during 500 h of operation. This work is expected to open up a new avenue for designing non-sulfur catalysts that can make the green diesel production greener.