A high 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) yield of 53 mol% was obtained by direct degradation of cellulose in a biphasic system with concentrated NaHSO₄ and ZnSO₄ as co-catalysts, with 96% of cellulose conversion in 60 min. The high concentration of catalysts in the aqueous solution and the high volume ratio of organic phase to aqueous phase were responsible for the excellent performance. The depolymerization of cellulose is the rate-determine step, and the formed glucose could be efficiently converted by concentrated catalysts in the aqueous solution, leading to low concentration of glucose in the solution and thus suppressing the side reactions such as humin and char formation.

Catalytic hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of vegetable oils to renewable alkane-type biofuels has attracted more and more concern in recent years. However, the presently used catalysts were mainly focused on the sulfided CoMo and NiMo catalysts, which inevitably posed sulfur contamination in final products. Therefore, exploring nonsulfured catalyst for this processing is of fundamental importance, but it is still an open challenge. In this paper, we prepared the sulfur free Ni supported on SiO₂, γ-Al₂O₃, SAPO-11, HZSM-5, and HY by incipient wetness impregnation and tested the catalytic performance in HDO of methyl palmitate. Alkanes with long carbon chains were mainly produced with two possibly parallel approaches: hydrogenation of hexadecanal to hexadecanol, followed by dehydration/hydrogenation to C₁₆ alkane and decarbonylaton/decarboxylation of hexadecanoic acid to C₁₅ alkane. The acidity of catalysts significantly influenced their catalytic performance, and the Ni/SAPO-11 catalysts with weak and medium acidity showed superior properties to the other catalysts due to the synergistic effect of metal Ni and acidic support. The maximum yield of 93% for C₁₅₊ alkanes was observed over 7 wt % Ni/SAPO-11 under the mild reaction conditions of 493 K and 2 MPa, indicating its promising application in this reaction.

An 85.5% yield of C₆ alditols was achieved from ball-milled cellulose by amorphous zirconium phosphate (ZPA) combined with Ru/C.