206 Producing Fuels and Fine Chemicals from Biomass Using Nanomaterials
vacuum ltration, washing with methanol, and drying performed after each reaction.
It was found that after the rst use, the activity dropped considerably as 10 h were
required to reach full conversion in the second run as opposed to 5 h for the rst run.
Nevertheless, after this initial drop in activity, the activity remained constant for
three additional runs. Leaching of the metal into solution was found not to occur to a
noticeable degree. Importantly, the authors also noted that the oxidation of methanol
occurs to a signicant extent, leading to the formation of side-products such as meth-
ylformate, formaldehyde dimethylacetal, and CO
2
. For longer-chain alcohols, sim ...