Phosphorus-Modified Zirconium Metal Organic Frameworks For Catalytic Transfer Hydrogenation Of Furfural

Phosphorus-modified Zr-metal organic framework (P/Zr-MOF) catalysts were synthesized by a (NH4)(2)HPO4 pyrolysis approach starting from Zr-MOFs. The furfural catalytic transfer hydrogenation performance of P/Zr-MOFs was studied with i-propanol as a hydrogen donor. Experimental results show that the furfural conversion of P/Zr-MOFs rose from 59.1% to 96.1% compared with that of Zr-MOFs. In P/Zr-MOFs compared with Zr-MOFs, a part of O-Zr-O in the MOFs was phosphated to form O-Zr-P and P-Zr-P, in which Zr-P possessed stronger Lewis acidity and basicity than Zr-O, which is favorable for hexatomic ring-catalytic reactions. Hence, P/Zr-MOFs exhibited higher Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley reactivity. Based on this result, a plausible mechanism of catalytic modification was proposed.