Zeolite-encaged gold catalysts for the oxidative condensation of furfural

The oxidative condensation between renewable furfural and fatty alcohols is a crucial avenue for producing high-quality liquid fuels and valuable furan derivatives. The selectivity control in this reaction process remains a significant challenge. Herein, we report the strategy of confining well dispersed gold species within ZSM-5 structure to construct highly active Au@ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts for the oxidative condensation of furfural. Characterization results and spectroscopy analyses demonstrate the efficient encapsulation of isolated and cationic Au clusters in zeolite structure. Au@ZSM-5(K) catalyst shows remarkable performance with 69.7% furfural conversion and 90.2% furan-2-acrolein selectivity as well as good recycle stability. It is revealed that the microstructure of ZSM-5 zeolite can significantly promote oxidative condensation activity through confinement effects. This work presents an explicit example of constructing zeolite encaged noble metal catalysts toward targeted chemical transformations.