Abstract: Biomass conversion is one of the most effective ways for alleviating the energy and environmental crisis. As one of the most important bio-based platform molecules, the conversion of γ-valerolactone to value-added chemicals was studied in this work. A series of CuZn/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared by co-precipitation method and the structure and properties of the catalysts obtained were characterized by several technologies such as ICP, XRD, TEM, and CO2-TPD. We focused our attention on the effects of reduction temperature on the catalytic performances of CuZn/Al2O3 catalysts in γ-valerolactone hydrogenation, it was found that the reduction temperature significantly influenced the activity and selectivity of CuZn/Al2O3 catalysts, that is, the higher reduction temperature benefited for the formation of 1,4-pentanediol, and a high selectivity of 98% was achieved over the catalyst reduced at 440 oC, while it was only 71% on the catalyst reduced at 200 oC. Based on the structure analysis of catalyst, it was concluded that the high reduction temperature could promote the reduction of ZnO and generated new surface active sites and varied the surface basic-acid properties, thus resulted in the improvement of 1,4-pentanediol selectivity.

Key words: Cu-based catalysts, γ-valerolactone, 1,4-pentanediol, 2-methyltetrahydrofuran, reduction temperature, basic sites, selectivity