Carbon-Increasing Catalytic Strategies for Upgrading Biomass into Energy-Intensive Fuels and Chemicals

Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic carbon source and has received a great deal of interest as renewable and sustainable feedstock for the production of potential biofuels and value-added chemicals with a wide range of designed catalytic systems. However, those natural polymeric materials are composed of short-chain monomers (typically C-6 and C-5 sugars) and complex lignin molecules containing plenty of oxygen, resulting in products during the downstream processing having low-grade fuel properties or limited applications in organic syntheses. Accordingly, approaches to increase the carbon-chain length or carbon atom number have been developed as crucial catalytic routes for upgrading biomass into energy-intensive fuels and chemicals. The primary focus of this review is to systematically describe the recent examples on the selective synthesis of long-chain oxygenates via different C-C coupling catalytic processes, such as Aldol condensation, hydroalkylation/alkylation, oligomerization, ketonization, Diels-Alder, Guerbet, and acylation reactions. Other integrated reaction steps including, for example, hydrolysis, dehydration, oxidation, partial hydrogenation, and hydro-deoxygenation (HDO) to derive corresponding key intermediates or final products are also reviewed. The effects of catalyst structure/type and reaction parameters on the catalytic performance along with relevant reaction mechanisms are in detail discussed. Apart from this, the formation of other useful compounds containing C-X bonds (X = O, N, and S) derived from biomass-based substrates for producing fuel additives and valuable chemicals is also briefly reviewed.