Enhanced hydrodeoxygenation of lignin-derived anisole to arenes catalyzed by Mn-doped Cu/Al2O3

Lignin is a renewable carbon resource to produce arenes due to its abundant aromatic structures. For the liquid-phase hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) based on metallic catalysts, the preservation of aromatic rings in lignin or its derivatives remains a challenge. Herein, we synthesized Mn-doped Cu/Al2O3 catalysts from layered double hydroxides (LDHs) for liquid-phase HDO of lignin-derived anisole. Mn doping significantly enhanced the selective deoxygenation of anisole to arenes and inhibited the saturated hydrogenation on Cu/Al2O3. With Mn doping increasing, the surface of Cu particles was modified with MnOx along with enhanced generation of oxygen vacancies (Ov). The evolution of active sites structure led to a controllable adsorption geometry of anisole, which was beneficial for increasing arenes selectivity. As a result, the arenes selectivity obtained on 4Cu/8Mn4AlOx was increased to be more than 6 folds of that value on 4Cu/4Al2O3 over the synergistic sites between metal Cu and Ov generated on MnOx. (c) 2021 Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communi-cations Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).