Incorporation of molybdenum into Pd and Pt catalysts supported on commercial silica for hydrodeoxygenation reaction of dibenzofuran

[Display omitted] •Some interaction metal-Mo controls the acidity, reducibility and dispersion of the resultant sample.•PtMo/SiO2 catalyst is always more effective, all hydrogen consumed leads to O-free hydrogenated products.•In both bimetallic catalysts the HDO capability improved if compared to the monometallic ones.•Mo promotes the hydrogenolysis reaction regardless the noble metal.•The results confirmed the presence of an enhancing synergetic effect between noble metal and molybdenum. Molybdenum was incorporated into catalysts based on noble metals (Pt or Pd) and supported on silica in order to evaluate how its presence can modify the catalytic response of monometallic catalysts for hydrodeoxygenation (HDO). To this end, the catalysts were evaluated in the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) reaction of dibenzofuran (DBF) and characterized by different experimental techniques to understand its structure, texture and acidic properties. Catalytic results showed that the active phase had much influence on the activity and selectivity to different reaction products, although, in all cases, bicyclohexane (BCH) was the main reaction product observed. Molybdenum played a very important role in the case of bimetallic catalysts, mainly in the case of palladium. Molybdenum species improved the selectivity to O-free products related to its capacity to break the CO bond. However, molybdenum activity was nil in the absence of noble metal. Moreover, regardless of the noble metal employed, the reducibility, acidity and dispersion of the molybdenum species changed and this is possibly associated to a synergism effect between noble metal and Mo.