Sustainable production of benzene from lignin.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34312395.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-24780-8 and PMC identifier 8313573.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Benzene is a widely used commodity chemical, which is currently produced from fossil resources. Lignin, a waste from lignocellulosic biomass industry, is the most abundant renewable source of benzene ring in nature. Efficient production of benzene from lignin, which requires total transformation of C<sub>sp2</sub>-C<sub>sp3</sub>/C<sub>sp2</sub>-O into C-H bonds without side hydrogenation, is of great importance, but has not been realized. Here, we report that high-silica HY zeolite supported RuW alloy catalyst enables in situ refining of lignin, exclusively to benzene via coupling Bronsted acid catalyzed transformation of the C<sub>sp2</sub>-C<sub>sp3</sub> bonds on the local structure of lignin molecule and RuW catalyzed hydrogenolysis of the C<sub>sp2</sub>-O bonds using the locally abstracted hydrogen from lignin molecule, affording a benzene yield of 18.8% on lignin weight basis in water system. The reaction mechanism is elucidated in detail by combination of control experiments and density functional theory calculations. The high-performance protocol can be readily scaled up to produce 8.5 g of benzene product from 50.0 g lignin without any saturation byproducts. This work opens the way to produce benzene using lignin as the feedstock efficiently.
Medical subject headings
- Benzene
- Hydrogen
- Lignin
- Water
- Zeolites