Furfural (FAL), a major biomass-derived chemical, can be hydrogenated to yield the industrially importantplatform chemical, furfuryl alcohol (FOL). Although heterogeneous catalyst-based methods are known toyield FOL from dilute solutions of FAL, they mainly operate at high temperatures and/or high pressures ofhydrogen and in the presence of organic solvents. In this work, we employ bimetallic PtCo/C catalysts withvarying metal concentrations to achieve the maximum possible FOL yield (100%) at 35 °C under 0.1 MPa H2in water. With concentrated FAL (40 wt%) at 50 °C and under 1 MPa H2pressure, 86% yield of FOL wasobserved. Moreover, efficient catalyst recycling was observed over at least four runs with marginal loss inactivity due to handling error and isolation of FOL in pure form confirmed by NMR and HPLC.Characterization of catalysts with several physico-chemical techniques (XRD, TEM, XPS, ICP, TPR) revealsthe presence of electron-rich Pt and ionic Co species in proximity with each other and these worksynergistically to facilitate maximum possible yield of FOL under ambient conditions and in water medium

Foreign