Tailoring Catalytic Properties of CuMgAl Hydrotalcites for Selective hydrogenolysis of Cellulose

The structure and catalytic properties of CuMgAl ternary hydrotalcites were tailored by adjusting M-II/M-III molar ratios. Due to the Jahn-Teller distortion effect, co-crystallized impurity phase assigned to Cu-2(NO3)(OH)(3) was formed for the catalyst with high M-II/M-III molar ratio. The formation of impurity phase resulted in the significant change of morphologies and low dispersion of copper species in the hydrotalcites. Nevertheless, the corresponding catalyst exhibited great catalytic proformance in term of ethylene glycol (EG) selectivity for the hydrogenolysis of cellulose. Besides, higher activity was obtained over the catalysts with higher content of Mg due to an increase of the alkalinity.