[a] Currently, automotive fuel production from biomass on any meaningful scale is limited in practice to the fermentative processing of starch hydrolysates or sucrose to ethanol. Although cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel are gaining momentum as reasonable alternatives to agriculturally derived ethanol, [1] they do not at present make a significant impression on the alternative fuel landscape. The principal issue in the case of cellulosic ethanol is first and foremost the difficult and expensive derivation of fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. Beyond this, there are also the limitations inherent in the fermentation process in terms of rate, efficiency, and the cost of isolating pure ethanol from a dilute aqueous solution.[2] Finally, ethanol is volatile, toxic, hydrophilic, potentially corrosive to engine components, [3] and of relatively low energy content compared to gasoline or diesel fuel.The disincentives associated with both agriculturally derived biofuels and cellulosic ethanol have driven innovation in the area of alternative energy. In particular, work by Dumesic and coworkers on the reductive stripping of sugars and sugar condensation products to hydrocarbons has figured centrally in this field of endeavor.[4] Huber and coworkers have also described the pyrolysis of biomass in the presence of catalysts to give a range of aromatic hydrocarbons in good yield. [5] Most recently, Binder and Raines have shown that corn stover can be processed to 5-hydroxymethylfurural (HMF) in a medium loaded with 10 mol % CrCl 3 , 10 mol % HCl, and 60 wt % 1-ethyl-3-methyl-imidazolium chloride ([EMIM]Cl) in an N,N-dimethylacetamide-LiCl solution to give 48 % yield of HMF alongside 34 % furfural (by HPLC analysis). Appending a catalytic reduction step to this process gave 2,5-dimethylfuran, a potential biofuel, in 9 % isolated yield. [6] In an earlier communication, we reported that glucose, sucrose, and microcrystalline cellulose could be converted into a mixture of 5-(chloromethyl)furfural (CMF; 1), 5-(hydroxymethyl) furfural (HMF; 2), 2-(2-hydroxyacetyl)furan (HAF; 3), and levulinic acid (LA; 4) in combined yields of up to 90 % by simple reaction with an aqueous HCl-LiCl solution.[7] The major product, CMF 1, accounts for about 80 % of the material isolated, and could be converted into 5-(ethoxymethyl)furfural (EMF; 5) by simple mixing with ethanol. EMF, a liquid with a boiling point of 235 8C, is already being commercially developed as a promising diesel fuel additive.[8] Alternatively, hydrogenolysis of the halogen in 1 gave 5-methylfurfural (MF; 6), boiling point 187 8C, which we consider to be a particularly attractive biofuel candidate, since only 2 g of H 2 are required for the synthesis of 110 g of 6, as opposed to 46 g of ethanol in the synthesis of 154 g of 5.Hemicellulose is the second-most-abundant organic material in nature, representing 25-35 % of lignocellulose by mass.[9] In mainstream ethanol production, this vast resource goes unutilized, because conventional yeasts cannot ferment C 5 su...