The conversion of biomass into fuels and chemical feedstocks is one part of a drive to reduce the world's dependence on crude oil. For transportation fuels in particular, wholesale replacement of a fuel is logistically problematic, not least because of the infrastructure that is already in place. Here, we describe the catalytic defunctionalization of a series of biomass-derived molecules to provide linear alkanes suitable for use as transportation fuels. These biomass-derived molecules contain a variety of functional groups, including olefins, furan rings and carbonyl groups. We describe the removal of these in either a stepwise process or a one-pot process using common reagents and catalysts under mild reaction conditions to provide n-alkanes in good yields and with high selectivities. Our general synthetic approach is applicable to a range of precursors with different carbon content (chain length). This allows the selective generation of linear alkanes with carbon chain lengths between eight and sixteen carbons.

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In the version of this Article originally published, the reaction conditions given in Fig. 3 for conversion of compound 2 to compound 4 were incorrect, and should have been stated as ' Acetic acid/H 2 O, 100 °C, 3 h'; this has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of this Article.

No abstract

In the version of this Article originally published, the reaction conditions given in Fig. 3 for conversion of compound 2 to compound 4 were incorrect, and should have been stated as ' Acetic acid/H 2 O, 100 °C, 3 h'; this has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of this Article.