PNNL

Abstract

Understanding the deoxygenation of biomass-derived alcohols is of great importance for the conversion of renewable biomass to energy carriers. In this work, we present unique reaction pathways for phenylmethanol on a rutile TiO2(110) by using a combination of molecular beam dosing and temperature programmed desorption. The results from both regular and OD-labelled phenylmethanol demonstrate that hydroxyl hydrogen is transferred to the benzyl group to yield methylbenzene between 300 K and 480 K. In the competing reaction, the hydroxyl hydrogen is also converted to water in the same temperature range. Once the hydroxyl hydrogen is depleted above 480 K, the remain-ing phenylmethoxy surface species undergo C-O bond cleavage yielding gas-phase benzyl radical species. These find-ings reveal the formation of free radical species from the interaction of phenylmethanol with TiO2(110) and demon-strate a direct mechanism for deoxygenation of lignin-derived benzylic alcohols to aromatics on TiO2.