Sustainable production of benzene from lignin

Qinglei Meng (), Jiang Yan, Ruizhi Wu, Huizhen Liu, Yang Sun, NingNing Wu, Junfeng Xiang, Lirong Zheng, Jing Zhang and Buxing Han ()
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Qinglei Meng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jiang Yan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Ruizhi Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Huizhen Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yang Sun: Chinese Academy of Sciences
NingNing Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Junfeng Xiang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lirong Zheng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jing Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Buxing Han: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Benzene is a widely used commodity chemical, which is currently produced from fossil resources. Lignin, a waste from lignocellulosic biomass industry, is the most abundant renewable source of benzene ring in nature. Efficient production of benzene from lignin, which requires total transformation of Csp2-Csp3/Csp2-O into C-H bonds without side hydrogenation, is of great importance, but has not been realized. Here, we report that high-silica HY zeolite supported RuW alloy catalyst enables in situ refining of lignin, exclusively to benzene via coupling Bronsted acid catalyzed transformation of the Csp2-Csp3 bonds on the local structure of lignin molecule and RuW catalyzed hydrogenolysis of the Csp2-O bonds using the locally abstracted hydrogen from lignin molecule, affording a benzene yield of 18.8% on lignin weight basis in water system. The reaction mechanism is elucidated in detail by combination of control experiments and density functional theory calculations. The high-performance protocol can be readily scaled up to produce 8.5 g of benzene product from 50.0 g lignin without any saturation byproducts. This work opens the way to produce benzene using lignin as the feedstock efficiently.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24780-8

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