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 Csp2-Csp3/Csp2-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 Csp2-Csp3 bonds on the local structure of lignin molecule and RuW catalyzed hydrogenolysis of the Csp2-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.
Using renewable electricity to drive CO2 electroreduction is an attractive way to achieve carbon‐neutral energy cycle and produce value‐added chemicals and fuels. As an important platform molecule and clean fuel, methanol requires 6‐electron transfer in the process of CO2 reduction. Currently, CO2 electroreduction to methanol suffers from poor efficiency and low selectivity. Herein, we report the first work to design atomically dispersed Sn site anchored on defective CuO catalysts for CO2 electroreduction to methanol. It exhibits high methanol Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 88.6 % with a current density of 67.0 mA cm−2 and remarkable stability in a H‐cell, which is the highest FE(methanol) with such high current density compared with the results reported to date. The atomic Sn site, adjacent oxygen vacancy and CuO support cooperate very well, leading to higher double‐layer capacitance, larger CO2 adsorption capacity and lower interfacial charge transfer resistance. Operando experiments and density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the catalyst is beneficial for CO2 activation via decreasing the energy barrier of *COOH dissociation to form *CO. The obtained key intermediate *CO is then bound to the Cu species for further reduction, leading to high selectivity toward methanol.
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