One-pot hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of biomass furan derivatives into long-chain alkanes remains unclear owing to the complicated reactions at high temperatures. Here, Pd/C combined with phosphotungstic acid (HPW), a strong Brønsted solid acid promoter, was developed to produce decane under mild conditions through the one-pot HDO of δ-furfurylidenelevulinic acid (FDLA). A 93.16% sum yield of alkanes including 89.53% yield of decane was obtained under 3 MPa H2 at 170 °C for 4 h. The ring-opening and HDO of furans are accomplished at preheating stage, which enable to clarify the complicated reaction pathway. In addition, experimental validations and catalytic characterizations confirm that the synergistic effect of active acid–metal sites plays a critical role in the generation of alkanes via the formation and hydrogenolysis of lactone intermediates to aldehyde/alcohol. This work provides guidance for the one-pot HDO of biomass furan derivatives via the combination of metal catalyst and strong Brønsted solid acid under mild conditions.
Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is an effective technology for the conversion of bio-oil to high quality liquid fuels, in which an active and stable catalyst is crucial to gain a high reaction efficiency. In this work, a novel bifunctional catalyst of different Ru-based biochar catalyst coupled with silicotungstic acid (HSiW) was proposed to conduct the HDO of lignin-derived phenolic compounds under mild reaction condition. Ru/C-bamboo catalyst exhibited a better HDO performance than other Ru-based biochar catalysts and commercial Ru/C catalyst. Catalyst characterizations showed that Ru/C-bamboo catalyst possessed a rich mesoporous structure of 0.06 cm 3 /g mesopore volume and 0.07 cm 3 /g micropore volume, with a large specific surface area of 209 m 2 / g. A high metal dispersion and a good hydrogen adsorption ability were achieved in Ru/C-bamboo catalyst. And Guaiacol can be completely converted to cyclohexane with 87.7% selectivity at the temperature of 140 °C. Other typical phenolic compounds were also transformed into corresponding cycloalkanes with high yields above 90% in most cases. Besides, the lignin-oil also had a great improvement on the stability and the heat value after upgradation, with an increase of hydrocarbon content from 9.7% to 31.9%. This result indicated the potential of the bifunctional catalyst in the field of lignin-oil valorization.