Furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural stand out as bridges connecting biomass raw materials to the biorefinery industry. Their reductive transformations by hydroconversion are key routes toward a wide variety of chemicals and biofuels, and heterogeneous catalysis plays a central role in these reactions. The catalyst efficiency highly depends on the nature of metals, supports, and additives, on the catalyst preparation procedure, and obviously on reaction conditions to which catalyst and reactants are exposed: solvent, pressure, and temperature. The present review focuses on the roles played by the catalyst at the molecular level in the hydroconversion of furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural in the gas or liquid phases, including catalytic hydrogen transfer routes and electro/photoreduction, into oxygenates or hydrocarbons (e.g., furfuryl alcohol, 2,5-bis­(hydroxymethyl)­furan, cyclopentanone, 1,5-pentanediol, 2-methylfuran, 2,5-dimethylfuran, furan, furfuryl ethers, etc.). The mechanism of adsorption of the reactant and the mechanism of the reaction of hydroconversion are correlated to the specificities of each active metal, both noble (Pt, Pd, Ru, Au, Rh, and Ir) and non-noble (Ni, Cu, Co, Mo, and Fe), with an emphasis on the role of the support and of additives on catalytic performances (conversion, yield, and stability). The reusability of catalytic systems (deactivation mechanism, protection, and regeneration methods) is also discussed.

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Catalytic dehydration of glycerol to acrolein has the potential to valorise the glut of crude glycerol issuing from biodiesel production. This reaction requires catalysts with appropriate acidity, and intensive research activities have been focused on the application of families of catalysts including zeolites, heteropolyacids, mixed metal oxides and (oxo)-pyrophosphates, as their acidic properties are well-known. Nevertheless, their deactivation by coking remains the main obstacle in the way of large-scale industrial applications. Considering this important issue, various technologies have been proposed for regenerating the catalysts. This review shows that a well-balanced combination of an appropriate catalytic system together with an adapted regeneration process could put large-scale industrial applications within reach.

Catalytic dehydration is one of the possible reactions to valorize the large amounts of glycerol yielding from the transesterification process. Thus, since the biodiesel boom in 2004−2005, many publications proposing various catalytic systems can be found. In this review, the current state of the art based on the most recent publications is presented and discussed in detail with respect to the observed catalytic performance as well as long-term stability. Next to the applied development of new catalysts, a main focus is the influence of the most critical parameter: the acidity of the catalyst and its correlation to the catalytic performance (selectivity and conversion). In addition, recent results on the thermodynamic calculation are presented, thus giving an insight into the most probably involved intermediates.

Aliphatic PNP pincer-supported earth-abundant manganese­(I) dicarbonyl complexes behave as effective catalysts for the acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling of a wide range of alcohols to esters under base-free conditions. The reaction proceeds under neat conditions, with modest catalyst loading and releasing only H2 as byproduct. Mechanistic aspects were addressed by synthesizing key species related to the catalytic cycle (characterized by X-ray structure determination, multinuclear (1H, 13C, 31P, 15N, 55Mn) NMR, infrared spectroscopy, inter alia), by studying elementary steps connected to the postulated mechanism, and by resorting to DFT calculations. As in the case of related ruthenium and iron PNP catalysts, the dehydrogenation results from cycling between the amido and amino-hydride forms of the PNP-Mn­(CO)2 scaffold. For the dehydrogenation of alcohols into aldehydes, our results suggest that the highest energy barrier corresponds to the hydrogen release from the amino-hydride form, although its value is close to that of the outer-sphere dehydrogenation of the alcohol into aldehyde. This contrasts with the ruthenium and iron catalytic systems, where dehydrogenation of the substrate into aldehyde is less energy-demanding compared to hydrogen release from the cooperative metal–ligand framework.

The massive increase in biodiesel production by transesterification of vegatable oils goes hand-in-hand with the availability of a large volume of glycerol, which must be valorized. Glycerol dehydration to acrolein over acid catalysts is one of the most promising ways of valorization, because this compound is an important chemical intermediate used in, for example, the DL-methionine synthesis. In this Minireview, we give a detailed critical view of the state-of-the-art of this dehydration reaction. The processes developed in both the liquid and the gas phases are detailed and the best catalytic results obtained so far are reported as a benchmark for future developments. The advances on the understanding of the reaction mechanism are also discussed and we further focus particularly on the main obstacles for an immediate industrial application of this technology, namely catalyst coking and crude glycerol direct-use issues.

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HAP solids were prepared with different Ca/P ratios and Na+ cations before being characterized by XRD, XPS, LEIS, NMR, IR, and TGA. Their acid–base properties were then measured and discussed in relation to the characterization results.