This paper showed the thorough analysis results of aqueous phase hydrogenation reactions for sorbitol over nickel catalyst under optimal conditions. The final products were studied in detail including those in gas phase, aqueous phase and organic phase, respectively. The results showed that the catalytic performance of the catalyst was excellent with 100 % of sorbitol conversion. The contents of products the gas phase was very low and the total carbon selectivity was only 1.74 %. Meanwhile, some lighter molecular weight alcohols, i.e., methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, isosorbitol and the other polyols could also be detected in the aqueous fraction. Especially, isosorbitol was found to be the main alcohol in water, which was formed by dehydration of sorbitol molecule over the acid zeolites. The total carbon selectivity in aqueous phase was only 8.79 %. The final oil volume was about 730 uL/36 mL reactants after a sampling period. The result of GC-MS clearly indicated that 47.29 % of aromatic, 24.53 % of ketone, 2.30 % of furan and 13.15 % of organic acid were the main composition of oil products, wherein most of these aromatic compounds can used as the gasoline additive.
Tan, J., Liu, Q., Qiu, S., Wang, T., Zhang, Q., Zhang, Q. and Ma, L. (2013). 'The potential gasoline additive produced by aqueous phase catalysis of sorbitol'. SET Proceedings, 12(1), pp. 1515-1520. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2013.164
