Sustainable bio-renewable sources represent a platform from where the chemicals industry can divert onto the biological level, thus reducing the consumption of fossil hydrocarbons. The alternative to standards industrial procedures of sugar oxidation with undesirable reagents present sugar oxidation with the help of heterogeneous catalysts. They play an important role as they accelerate chemical reactions and their activity has an impact on the final yield of the entire process.
In the experimental part of the thesis, I synthesised a 7 wt% Au/ZrO2 catalyst and, using different analytical techniques such as scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray powder diffraction, compared it to the 10 wt% Au/TiO2 catalyst, which is commercially available. I examined surface morphology, the element composition of samples and the size of particles. With high-performance liquid chromatography, I analysed the products of glucose oxidation and evaluated the activity of individual catalysts on different carriers. According to the performed analyzes, the catalyst I synthesised proved to be better than the commercial catalyst, yet not effective enough, as I did not obtain the desired molecules of glucaric acid.
|
