Utilizing biomass-derived furan-based platform chemicals for the production of a wide range of value-added components for application as fuels/fuel blenders and other fine chemicals is gaining much attention. Here, we demonstrated an efficient room-temperature selective hydrogenation of furan-based long chain aldol compounds over supported NiPd/SiO2, NiPd/RHA (RHA is rice-husk ash), and NiPd/Z4A (Z4A is zeolite 4A) catalysts in water. A wide range of furan-based compounds, such as 1,5-bis­(furan-2-yl)­penta-1,4-dien-3-one (1), 4-(furan-2-yl)­but-3-en-2-one (3), 1,3-bis­(furan-2-yl)­prop-2-en-1-one (4), 1-(furan-2-yl)-3-(5-methylfuran-2-yl)­prop-2-en-1-one (5), and 3-(furan-2-ylmethylene)­pentane-2,4-dione (6), were conveniently hydrogenated to the corresponding saturated ketone products using the present protocol. Our findings inferred that the studied supported NiPd catalysts selectively promoted the hydrogenation of the CC bond over the CO bond to yield the corresponding saturated ketone products. The observed tuned catalytic properties can be attributed to the crucial role of the support in controlling the substrate-to-surface interactions, presumably, by disfavoring the interaction of polar carbonyl functional groups with the catalyst surface and, hence, facilitating the hydrogenation of CC over CO bonds. Moreover, the support RHA facilitated the high dispersion of NiPd nanoparticles (∼4 nm) for the NiPd/RHA catalyst. Hence, the NiPd/RHA catalyst displayed high stability under the catalytic reaction conditions and was reused for six consecutive catalytic runs without any significant loss in the catalytic activity.

Transformation of biomass‐derived furans to value‐added chemicals is considered to be an efficient way to produce raw materials for application in chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Herein, we report a facile pathway for the catalytic hydrogenation of 2‐furoic acid and its derivatives to tetrahydrofuroic acids with excellent yields (87%–95 %) in water over the Pd/CoOx catalyst under mild reaction condition. Experimental findings inferred that the observed efficient catalytic activity of Pd/CoOx can be attributed to the cooperative effect of Pd nanoparticles (∼3.5 nm) and the CoOx support. Notably, catalysts with naked Pd nanoparticles or Pd immobilized over supports other than CoOx were less active for the studied catalytic transformation. Further, the studied catalytic transformation can be advantageously utilized for bulk‐scale production of tetrahydro‐2‐furoic acid and tetrahydrofuran‐2,5‐dicarboxylic acid from the respective furoic acid precursors. Moreover, the studied Pd/CoOx catalyst exhibited appreciably good long‐term stability for over 60 h during bulk‐scale reaction and can be recycled for five consecutive catalytic runs during the production of tetrahydro‐2‐furoic acid from 2‐furoic acid.