Being the only sustainable source of organic carbon, biomass is playing an ever-increasingly important role in our energy landscape. The conversion of renewable lignocellulosic biomass into liquid fuels is particularly attractive but extremely challenging due to the inertness and complexity of lignocellulose. Recently, Prof. Yanqin Wang’s group achieved remarkable advance in the direct production of liquid biofuels from raw lignocellulosic materials. A paper entitled “Direct hydrodeoxygenation of raw woody biomass into liquid alkanes” was published on Nature Communications (Nat. Commun. 2016, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11162; http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160330/ncomms11162/full/ncomms11162.html)
    The research work describes the direct hydrodeoxygenation of raw woods into liquid alkanes with mass yields up to 28.1 wt% over a multifunctional Pt/NbOPO4 catalyst in cyclohexane. The superior performance of this catalyst allows simultaneous conversion of cellulose, hemicellulose and, more significantly, lignin fractions in the wood sawdust into hexane, pentane and alkylcyclohexanes, respectively. Investigation on the molecular mechanism reveals that a synergistic effect between Pt, NbOx species and acidic sites promotes this highly efficient hydrodeoxygenation of bulk lignocellulose. No chemical pretreatment of the raw woody biomass or separation is required for this one-pot process, which opens a general and energy-efficient route for converting raw lignocellulose into valuable alkanes.

    This work was completed collectively by Dr. Qineng Xia and Zongjia Chen, under the collaboration of Dr. Haifeng Wang from our school and Dr. Sihai Yang from the University of Manchester, with the help of Dr. Stewart F. Parker from Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, Oxford, UK.
    The project was supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Shanghai Rising-Star Program.