Photocatalytic Upgrading of Lignin Oil to Diesel Precursors and Hydrogen

Producing renewable biofuels from biomass is a promising way to meet future energy demand. Here, we demonstrated a lignin to diesel route via dimerization of the lignin oil followed by hydrodeoxygenation. The lignin oil undergoes C-C bond dehydrogenative coupling over Au/CdS photocatalyst under visible light irradiation, co-generating diesel precursors and hydrogen. The Au nanoparticles loaded on CdS can effectively restrain the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes, thus improving the efficiency of the dimerization reaction. About 2.4 mmol gcatal-1 h-1 dimers and 1.6 mmol gcatal-1 h-1 H2 were generated over Au/CdS, which is about 12 and 6.5 times over CdS, respectively. The diesel precursors are finally converted into C16-C18 cycloalkanes or aromatics via hydrodeoxygenation reaction using Pd/C or porous CoMoS catalyst, respectively. The conversion of pine sawdust to diesel was performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the lignin-to-diesel route.