Catalytic upgrading of ethanol to higher alcohols over ordered mesoporous Cu-La-Al composite metal oxides

Ordered mesoporous Cu-La-Al composite metal oxides were first synthesized via an evaporation induced selfassembly method and applied in upgrading of ethanol to higher alcohols. The Cu-La-Al composite metal oxide with optimal molar ratio of Cu/La/Al (4/2.6/100) exhibited selectivity and yield to higher alcohols up to 72.2% and 37.7%, respectively. What's more remarkable was that the catalyst exhibited ultra-high stability during 500 h on-stream evaluation. Various characterization techniques including N2 adsorption-desorption, XRD, TEM, TPR, XPS, UV-vis, 27Al NMR, NH3-TPD and CO2-TPD revealed that the synergy of a large amount of octahedrally coordinated Cu2+ and acid-base sites on the surface of Cu-La-Al composite metal oxides was responsible for the excellent catalytic activity and selectivity while the superior stability of the catalyst could be largely attributed to presence of the highly stable CuAl2O4 active phase besides the embedding effect of CuAl2O4 and La2O3 into skeleton of the composite oxides.