Highly dispersed Ag/SiO2 catalyst with weak metal-support interaction for diethyl oxalate hydrogenation to ethyl glycolate

Ethyl glycolate (EGly) is a platform molecule in various fields, which has been widely applied for the production of various valuable chemicals. Despite being a traditional catalyst for the conversion of diethyl oxalate (DEO) to EGly, Ag/SiO 2 catalyst exhibits insufficient activity. The present study introduces a novel preparation method that couples H 2 O 2 reduction with deposition precipitation to augment the performance of the catalyst. Performance results show that Ag/SiO 2 catalyst prepared by the new method attains a DEO conversion of 95.6% and an EGly selectivity of 78.0%, showing respective improvements of 10.0 and 15.2% over excess impregnation-evaporating solvent method. Characterization results show that the average silver particles size of Ag/SiO 2 catalyst prepared by the new method is 6 nm, which is 1/2 of the excess impregnation-evaporation solvent method. Simultaneously, it contains a greater quantity of Ag 0 . The smaller and more uniform particles offer greater active site density, leading to enhanced DEO conversion. An increased presence of Ag 0 diminishes DEO overactivation and inhibits the dissociative adsorption of H 2 . Moreover, the amplified quantity of Ag 0 could be attributed to the reduced interfacial charge transport triggered by metal-support interactions (MSIs).