Catalytic One-Pot Conversion of Renewable Platform Chemicals to Hydrocarbon and Ether Biofuels through Tandem Hf(OTf)4 +Pd/C Catalysis

The exploration of deoxygenation reactions for alcohols and derivatives using earth-abundant reagents

In Earth matter evolution, the deoxygenation process plays a central role as plant and animal remains, which are composed by highly oxygenated molecules, were gradually deoxygenated into hydrocarbons to give fossil fuels deep in the Earth crust. The understanding of this process is becoming crucial to the entire world and to the sustainable development of mankind. This review provides a brief summary of the extensive deoxygenation research under mild, potentially sustainable conditions. We also summarize some challenges and opportunities for potential deoxygenation reactions in the future.

Electrochemically Triggered Chain Reactions for the Conversion of Furan Derivatives

We report an electrochemical method for coupling biomass-derived C5/C6 compounds to value-added fuel precursors. Using only 2 % of equivalent charges, 2-methylfuran (2-MF) was oxidized to yield a cation radical, which readily reacted with 3-hexene-2,5-dione, a derivate of 2,5-dimethylfuran, to produce 3-(5-methylfuran-2-yl)hexane-2,5-dione. The product was converted to 4-ethylnonane (a component of biodiesel/jet fuel) in a single step in excellent yield. Importantly, the reaction was not sensitive to oxygen, and a trace amount of water was found to promote the reaction. Detailed mechanistic studies confirmed the proposed reaction pathways. Key to the mechanism is the radical generation that is enabled by electrochemistry. The radical is regenerated at the end of a reaction cycle to ensure chain propagation for an average of ca. 47 times, resulting in an apparent Faradaic efficiency of 4700 %.