An inside-cover paper in the recently appearing issue of the Chemical Communication (2010, 46, 862-864)(Picture provided by DICP)

The team research team headed by Prof. ZHANG Tao from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (DICP), by considering the fact that tungsten carbide has been found to exhibit noble-metal-like catalytic properties in reactions involving hydrogen, have tried for the first time to utilize low-cost tungsten carbide catalysts for the catalytic conversion of cellulose.　

Researchers found that, by supporting tungsten carbide on activated carbon as the catalyst, and under the promotion of a small quantity of nickel, cellulose could be converted into ethylene glycol with a high yield of 61% (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2008, 47, 8510-8513; Catalyst Today 2009, 147, 77-85). After this, they further observed that by replacing the conventional activated carbon with meso-porous activated carbon, which had higher surface area and pore volume, not only the dispersion of the tungsten carbide could be enhanced, but also the mass transfer and diffusion of the reactants and products were improved.

Accordingly, they employed a novel method of using commercial silica as a hard template to prepare a kind of mesoporous carbon that possessed a three dimensional pore network, and tungsten carbide catalysts supporting on this new carbon material exhibited superior activity, selectivity and stability. It was found that even no nickel promoter was added, the yield of ethylene glycol could be over 70%.

Moreover, after recycling the catalyst for four batches of reactions, the yield of ethylene glycol could still attained ca. 60%.

The results were published as an inside-cover paper in the recently appearing issue of the Chemical Communication (2010, 46, 862-864) with the title of "A new 3D mesoporous carbon replicated from commercial silica as a catalyst support for direct conversion of cellulose into ethylene glycol".