Pure
shift, a novel nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy
technique is here applied to analyze the hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis
products of the biomass-derived platform compounds. The complex and
very overlapped 1H NMR signals of the model mixtures from
several biomass hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis reactions, such as glucose
hydrogenation, sorbitol hydrogenolysis, levulinic acid (LA) formation,
tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol hydrogenolysis, and a real reaction system,
were successfully analyzed and assigned by suppressing homonuclear
couplings. Thus, we can clearly achieve component analysis and distinguish
most signals according to one-dimensional (1D) pure shift obtained
by chirp excitation (PSYCHE) spectra. For sophisticated mixtures,
e.g., α-d-glucose, sorbitol, and mannitol, or LA, γ-valerolactone,
and 2-methyltetrahydrofuran, and finally the real reaction mixture,
the 1D total correlation spectroscopy (TOCSY)-PSYCHE approach was
used as a supplementary tool to obtain full signals in one component.
This allowed us to further resolve the signals where the PSYCHE technique
failed to distinguish the signals sufficiently. The results demonstrated
that the combined use of 1D PSYCHE and 1D TOCSY-PSYCHE techniques
successfully analyzed various catalytic hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis
mixtures and enabled us to provide precise signal assignments. Therefore,
the pure shift NMR tool (a combination of 1D PSYCHE and 1D TOCSY-PSYCHE)
can significantly simplify and successfully be used to assign the
NMR spectra of the biomass-derived complex mixture, such as hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis
reaction mixtures.