Featured Application: Authors are encouraged to provide a concise description of the specific application or a potential application of the work. This section is not mandatory.Abstract: A novel polymeric acid catalyst immobilized on a membrane substrate was found to possess superior catalytic activity and selectivity for biomass hydrolysis. The catalyst consists of two polymer chains, a poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PSSA) polymer chain for catalyzing carbohydrate substrate, and a neighboring poly(vinyl imidazolium chloride) ionic liquid (PIL) polymer chain for promoting the solvation of the PSSA chain to enhance the catalytic activity. In order to elucidate the mechanism and determine the energetics of biomass catalytic processing using this unique catalyst, classical molecular dynamics (MD) coupled with metadynamics (MTD) simulations were conducted to determine the free energy surfaces (FES) of cellulose hydrolysis. The critical role that PIL plays in the catalytic conversion is elucidated. The solvation free energy and the interactions between PSSA, PIL, and cellulose chains are found to be significantly affected by the solvent. metadynamics (CPMD-MTD) simulations [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] to elucidate the energetics and mechanisms of acid-catalyzed catalytic conversions, including cellulose hydrolysis, glucose ring opening, glucose dehydration, and isomerization reactions. The barriers of these reactions are found to strongly affect by the solvent. A partially dehydrated environment could potentially reduce the activation barrier and facilitate the hydrolysis reaction.Inspired by action of cellulase enzymes, a polymeric solid acid catalyst consisting of two adjacent nanostructures was synthesized and immobilized on a porous membrane substrate to mimic the function of cellulase. The poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PSSA) chain hydrolyzes the β-1,4-glycosidic bonds, whereas the neighboring poly(vinyl imidazolium chloride) ionic liquid (PIL) chain enhances the solvation of the PSSA chain and facilitates the dissolution of cellulose by breaking the intermolecular hydrogen bonds between the neighboring cellulose chains. The schematic interaction between the polymeric acid catalyst and cellulose is shown in Figure 1. The polymeric acid catalyst can operate at higher temperatures than cellulase enzymes, overcoming the limitations of biocatalysts to speed up the reaction rates significantly [32,33]. This designed polymeric acid catalyst was successfully synthesized and studied [34][35][36]. More than 97% total reduction of sugar (TRS) yield was obtained in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([EMIM]Cl) solution using cellulose as a substrate at a mild temperature of 130 • C. More recently, the depolymerization of lignocellulosic corn over the biomass was conducted using the optimized polymeric catalyst. Near-quantitative TRS yields were obtained in IL and IL/H 2 O mixed solvents for dilute acid, base, and stream-pretreated samples obtained from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory [35]. In addition, ove...