I made a small test and it seems not satisfactory. Having that the amount of Pd/C used in the reference makes it almost unworkable for practical purposes, I used much less catalyst.
2 grams of ketone, 100 mg 10 % Pd/C and 7.7 grams of am. formate in 30 ml of methanol and 3 of water. It was stirred one hour and half, not all am. formate was dissolved, then I added the Pd/C and rxn started immediatly with some effervescence, gasses were directed to a glass with water and I saw about 1 bubble each 6 seconds, one hour later, I warmed up a bit the rxn because there were less bubbles, and so on during 6 hours or so. Then the system was carried to reflux about one hour till there were not more bubbles.
A TLC showed all initial ketone was consumed, and it was a long spot that seemed to contain two different spots, and noone of them was where it should be.
Methanol was evaporated and rxn acidified with dilute HCl, and then appeared too much insoluble organics. I washed it with DCM, basified, extrated with toluene and now it is drying with KOH. I would say there's very little MDA if there's something.
It seems that the am formate reduces readily the ketone, probably to the alcohol and then to the alkane, as it is said in CTH references, but I'm surprised, I thought it would be necessary reflux conditions in acetic acid.
I'll post the results of the workup, but my first impression is that we have a problem that is similar to the NaBH4 procedure, it is not too much imine to reduce, and then the reducing agent reduces the ketone to alcohol in the case of NaBH4 or alcohol and alkane with CTH. Probably the imine should be formed previously, and then reduced with the CTH system. I think that water was added just to solubilize the ammonium salt, that is both the aminating and reducing agent, but it could be a problem with our loved ketone.