One-Pot Production of Cellulosic Ethanol via Tandem Catalysis over a Multifunctional Mo/Pt/WOx Catalyst

Cellulosic ethanol is one of the most important biofuels, yet its commercial production is hindered by the low-efficiency and high-cost bioconversion process. Here, we report a new chemocatalytic approach for the one-pot production of cellulosic ethanol. With a multifunctional Mo/Pt/WOx catalyst, cellulose is directly converted to ethanol in a one-pot reaction with a yield as high as 43.2 C%. Kinetic analysis reveals that such a one-pot process involves tandem catalysis from cellulose to ethylene glycol (rapid) followed by hydrogenolysis of ethylene glycol to ethanol (slow). Characterizations show that isolated and low-coordinated MoOx bonds to metallic Pt particles on the mesoporous WOx support, constituting xOMo-PtWOx interfacial sites, which offer high activity for C-O cleavage of ethylene glycol.