Boosting electron kinetics of anatase TiO2 with carbon nanosheet for efficient photo-reforming of xylose into biomass-derived organic acids

Photocatalytic biorefinery catches an ocean of attention because of its environmental friendliness. It is widely known that photocatalytic performance of TiO 2 is poor due to the wide bandgap and sluggish electron kinetics. Herein, biochar nanosheet and anatase TiO 2 (denoted as a- TiO 2 @MC) were combined to accelerate the charge separation/transfer and narrow the bandgap of TiO 2 , which is proved by UPS and Mott-Schottky plot analysis. With improved electron kinetics, comes excellent photocatalytic performance, which gave great yield of xylonic acid (52.26%) and lactic acid (49.22%). Furthermore, h + ,·OH, and 1 O 2 exerted positive effects on the synthesis of biomass-derived organic acids, in which the h + plays the major role in the biorefinery over a- TiO 2 @MC, whereas the·O 2 - is not. 1000-fold scale-up experiment indicated that 69.1% of the photocatalytic performance was achieved when compared with the similar conditions irradiated by visible light. This work provides an efficient photocatalytic biorefinery via a facile and low-cost way.