Zn promoted Cu–Al catalyst for hydrogenation of ethyl acetate to alcohol

The additives of Zn to Cu/Al2O3 catalysts had been studied for hydrogenation of ethyl acetate to ethanol. In addition, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), H2-temperature programmed reduction (TPR) and TEM studies were performed to characterize the catalysts. The flow reactor studies demonstrated that Zn significantly enhance the reactivity of ethyl acetate in the reaction. The nature of the Cu species on the support, the influence of Zn/Al molar ratio and time-on-stream study were also studied. Pretreatment using pure H2 at different temperatures affected the performance, while the best among the conditions tested was 573 K for 2 h. Addition of Zn influenced the particle size and dispersion of Cu in the studied system. The detected conversion of ethyl acetate reached 66.3% with a 95.3% selectivity of ethanol. This investigation of the Zn promoted Cu/Al2O3 catalyst provides a recently proposed pathway for ethyl acetate hydrogenation reaction to produce ethanol over Cu catalysts.