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Oil and water: A new energy-efficient and atom-economical catalytic route for the production of alkanes and methanol by upgrading the phenolic fraction of bio-oil has been developed. The one-pot aqueous-phase hydrodeoxygenation process is based on two catalysts facilitating consecutive hydrogenation, hydrolysis, and dehydration reactions.

Breaking down is usually hard to do…︁ The direct conversion of lignin into alkanes and methanol was carried out in a two‐step process (hydogenolysis and hydrogenation) involving initial treatment of white birch wood sawdust with H2 in dioxane/water/phosphoric acid using Rh/C as the catalyst. The resulting monomers and dimers obtained by selective CO hydrogenolysis were then hydrogenated in near‐critical water employing Pd/C as the catalyst.

Uniform ceria nanocrystals with good crystallinity and high surface areas were prepared by a facile alcohothermal method with the addition of bases (KOH or NaOH), using Ce(III) or Ce(IV) salt as a starting material. The as-prepared nanocrystals were characterized by means of powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), nitrogen adsorption, thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy (UV-vis). The ceria crystals had controllable sizes from 2.6 to 6.9 nm estimated by the PXRD line broadening analysis. TEM and HRTEM micrographs showed that the as-prepared ceria nanocrystals have a relatively high degree of crystallinity and low degree of conglomeration under high base concentrations. BET specific surface areas of the as-synthesized ceria nanocrystals were very high (103-238 m 2 g -1 ). XPS spectra indicated that the cerium in the nanocrystals was predominantly tetravalent. UV-vis spectra revealed that both the direct and indirect band gap energies of the as-prepared ceria nanocrystals showed a pronounced blue-shifting due to the quantum confinement effect compared to bulk ceria. And the dielectric confinement effect on the band gap energies was also discussed. The as-prepared ceria nanocrystals supported on γ-Al 2 O 3 exhibited a rather lower conversion temperature (559 K) for CO oxidation to CO 2 than that of bulk catalysts prepared by the coprecipitation method. Finally, a hydrolytic alcohothermal mechanism for the preparation of ceria nanocrystals was forwarded.

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A family of novel ionic liquids with amino acids and their derivatives as cations and environmentally benign materials as anions have been synthesized using easy preparation techniques. The ionic liquids obtained have the same characteristics as conventional imidazolium ionic liquids and the same chiralities as natural amino acids. Thermal stabilities, phase behaviour, viscosities and miscibilities of the representative family members have been investigated, generally showing no difference from conventional ionic liquids. These amino acid ionic liquids may be used as catalysts and ''fully green'' solvents in the cycloaddition of cyclopentadiene to methyl acrylate, which is a typical Diels-Alder reaction. This approach to treating amino acids and their derivatives can serve as an alternative to traditional ionic liquids having synthetic chemical components.

The one-step conversion of cellulose to C6-alcohols via green and energy efficient approaches has, as far as we are aware, not been reported. Such a process presents a considerable challenge, the two key problems being (1) finding a suitable solvent that dissolves the cellulose, and (2) the development of advanced catalytic chemistry for selective cleavage of the C-O-C bonds (glycosidic bonds) connecting glucose residues. The dissolution of cellulose has been recently realized by using ionic liquids as green solvents; there is still no efficient method, such as selective hydrogenation, for the precise C-O-C cleavage under mild conditions, however. Cellobiose is a glucose dimer connected by a glycosidic bond and represents the simplest model molecule for cellulose. We disclose in this communication that the one-step conversion of cellobiose to C6-alcohols can be realized by selectively breaking the C-O-C bonds via selective hydrogenation using a water-soluble ruthenium nanocluster catalyst under 40 bar H2 pressure.