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The copious availability of lignin prompts its downstream processing for aromatic derivatives, which can emerge as an important solution to global demand of speciality chemicals to the modern society. Hence, eco-friendly translation of lignocellulosic biomass to value added products, chemicals and sugars can establish sustainable biorefinery for effective utilization of vast carbon energy source i.e. lignocellulosic biomass. Among the three components viz. cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, the later is having aromatic building blocks which makes it facile to convert into a variety of chemicals and polymers. As a result, the technological development for the effective recovery and value addition of lignin in biorefinery has taken a more significant leap in recent times. In this chapter, a comprehensive emphasis is laid on the heterogeneous catalysts developed for the transformation of lignin derived alcohols particularly, veratryl alcohol and vanillyl alcohol into useful chemicals viz. veratryl aldehyde and vanillin, respectively. The catalyst systems developed for these oxidations have been discussed in detail with respect to their preparation, characterization and activity results.

Direct one-pot hydrogenation of furfural (FFR) to cyclopentanone (CPO) was investigated over different silica-supported Pd catalysts. Among these, 4% Pd on fumed silica (4%Pd/f-SiO2) showed remarkable results, achieving almost 98% furfural (FFR) conversion with ∼89% selectivity and 87% yield to cyclopentanone at 165 °C and 500 psig H2 pressure. More interestingly, the fumed-silica-supported catalyst tuned the selectivity toward the rearrangement product, i.e., cyclopentanone, whereas all of the other supports were found to give ring hydrogenation as well as side chain hydrogenation products due to their parent Brönsted acidity and specific support properties. X-ray diffraction data revealed the presence of different phases of the face-centered cubic lattice of metallic Pd along with lowest crystallite size of 15.6 nm in the case of the silica-supported Pd catalyst. However, Pd particle size was found to be in the range of 5–13 nm with even dispersion over the silica support, confirmed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis. While studying the effect of reaction parameters, it was observed that lower temperature gave low furfural conversion of 58% with only 51% CPO selectivity. Similarly, higher H2 pressure lowered CPO selectivity with subsequent increase in 2-methyl furan and ring hydrogenation product 2-methyl furan and 2-methyl tetrahydrofuran. Thus, as per the requirement, the product selectivity can be tuned by varying the type of support and/or the reaction parameters suitably. With the help of several control experiments and the characterization data, a plausible reaction pathway was proposed for the selective formation of cyclopentanone.

Solvent-free carbonylation of glycerol with urea to glycerol carbonate (GC) was achieved over heterogeneous Cu–Zn mixed oxide catalyst. Cu–Zn catalysts with different ratios of Cu:Zn were prepared using co-precipitation (CP) and oxalate gel (OG) methods. As compared to CuO–ZnO(2:1) catalyst prepared by oxalate gel (OG) method, much higher conversion of glycerol and highest selectivity towards glycerol carbonate (GC) was achieved with CuO–ZnO_CP(2:1) catalyst. Physicochemical properties of prepared catalysts were investigated by using XRD, FT-IR, BET, TPD of CO2 and NH3 and TEM techniques. The effect of stoichiometric ratio of Cu/Zn, calcination temperature of CuO–ZnO catalysts and effect of reaction parameters such as molar ratio of substrates, time and temperature on glycerol conversion to GC were critically studied. Cu/Zn of 2:1 ratio, glycerol–urea 1:1 molar ratio, 145 ​°C reaction temperatures were found to be optimized reaction conditions to achieve highest glycerol conversion of 86% and complete selectivity towards GC. The continuous expel of NH3 from reaction the mixture avoided formation of ammonia complex with CuO–ZnO catalyst. As a result of this, CuO–ZnO catalyst could be recycled up to three times without losing its initial activity.

Glycerol carbonate (GC) and glycidol (GD) are commercial products possible from glycerol transformation, which has become a subject of great importance. Among several basic catalysts screened in this work, BaO showed the highest glycerol conversion of 71% with almost complete selectivity to GC. A tandem synthesis of GD with a selectivity as high as 80% with 98% glycerol conversion could be achieved with mixed oxides of Ba and lanthanides (La and Ce) prepared by the coprecipitation method. Although BaO alone showed the highest basicity as measured by CO2 TPD, tuning of basicity by incorporation of CeO2 resulted in the formation of GD. Incorporation of Ba into the ceria matrix induced oxygen vacancies in the cerium oxide material. The presence of u″/v″ doublets at 888.7 and 903.2 eV, respectively, in XPS of the Ba–Ce sample also confirmed the oxygen vacancies in the lattice. In this tandem approach to GD, the subsequent decarboxylation of initially formed GC was due to the presence of a CeO2 lattice with de...

LaCoO3 perovskite was synthesized using sol-gel method by nitrate and acetate precursors of La and Co with varying molar ratios of La and Co (1:1, 1:2 and 2:1). This was found to be an unique strategy to obtain highly crystalline LaCoO3 perovskite material without using any chelating agent. The variation of precursors was found to influence their crystallinity however, variation in molar ratio in the range of 0.5–2, did not affect the formation of perovskite framework. The formation of pure perovskite phase (around or >80%) could be achieved by combination of acetate and nitrate precursors while, the combination of acetate- acetate or nitrate- nitrate precursors resulted in low phase purity for the perovskite due to the formation of secondary phases like La2O3 and Co3O4. Very interestingly, such combination of perovskite and pure oxide phases contributed to enhancement of basic sites which catalyzed the glycerol transestrifiaction with DMC (dimethyl carbonate) to GC (glycerol carbonate) and GD (glycidol). Among all the catalysts studied, NAP-2 showed highest efficiency in terms of 98% glycerol conversion and 77% GC and 22% GD selectivities. The highlight of this work is that first step glycerol transesterification with DMC required basic sites of either metal oxide or perovskite but for cascade reaction involving decarboxylation required both metal oxide as well as LaCoO3 perovskite phase.