The essential oil extracted from Cinnamomum camphora leaves is a mixture of volatile compounds, mainly terpenes, and is widely used in medicine, perfume and chemical industries. In this study, the extraction processes of essential oil from Cinnamomum camphora leaves by steam distillation and supercritical CO₂ extraction were summarized and compared, and the camphor tree essential oil was detected by GC/MS. The extraction rate of essential oil extracted by steam distillation is less than 0.5%, while that of supercritical CO₂ extraction is 4.63% at 25 MPa, 45 °C and 2.5 h. GC/MS identified 21 and 42 compounds, respectively. The content of alcohols in the essential oil is more than 35%, and that of terpenoids is more than 80%. The steam extraction method can extract volatile substances with a low boiling point and more esters and epoxides; The supercritical method is suitable for extracting weak polar substances with a high alcohol content. Supercritical CO₂ extraction can selectively extract essential oil components and effectively prevent oxidation and the escape of heat sensitive substances.

Conversion of lignin feedstocks into aromatic chemicals is a highly desirable target for biorefineries, and their depolymerization often requires high temperatures and harsh conditions. In this work, a process optimization involving several factors, including catalyst dosage, reaction temperature, reaction time, oxygen pressure and solvent effect, towards vanillin production from the oxidation of lignin-based vanillyl alcohol in a base-free solvent over a LaFeO₃ perovskite was proposed. The results pronounced that the LaFeO₃ perovskite exhibited excellent catalytic performance for affording a 100.0% conversion rate of vanillyl alcohol and 33.0% vanillin yield with the addition of 0.1 g LaFeO₃ dosage at 180 °C for 2 h under 1.0 MPa O₂ supply in ethyl acetate solvent. Furthermore, the presence of oxygen vacancies (Fe³⁺–□–Fe²⁺) in the LaFeO₃ perovskite contributed to combining with molecular oxygen to generate the active species [Fe³⁺O₂ ⁻], which played a key role in the oxidation of vanillyl alcohol and dominated the formation pathway of vanillin. On the other hand, reusability tests manifested that the performance of LaFeO₃ decreased gradually with the increase of consecutive runs and was strongly negatively related to the amount of carbon deposits, as carbon deposits would prevent vanillyl alcohol from being accessible to active sites. Nevertheless, the performance of the spent LaFeO₃ catalyst could be easily regenerated by a simple calcination approach. Overall, this work provides the possibility of a scalable strategy for constructing LaFeO₃-based perovskites as efficient and reusable catalysts for vanillin production from biorefinery lignin.

In this work, functionalized alkyl imidazolium hexafluorophosphate ILs were synthesized and characterized; then, they were applied in the conversion of xylose to furfural under the microwave method. The results showed that when C_nMF was used as a catalyst, an acidic environment was provided to promote the formation of furfural. In addition, the heating method, the solvent, and the different structures of cations in the ionic liquid influenced their catalytic activity. In an aqueous solution, the yield of furfural obtained using the microwave method was better than that of the conventional heating method, and the catalytic activity of diimidazole hexafluorophosphate was better than that of monoimidazole. Meanwhile, for the diimidazole hexafluorophosphate, the change of the carbon chain length between the imidazole rings also slightly influenced the yield. Finally, the optimal yield of 49.76% was obtained at 205°C for 8 min using 3,3′-methylenebis(1-methyl-1H-imidazol-3-ium), C₁MF, as a catalyst. Mechanistic studies suggested that the catalytic activity of C₁MF was mainly due to the combined effect of POF_n (OH)_3-n and imidazole ring. Without a doubt, the catalytic activity of C₁MF was still available after five cycles, which not only showed its excellent catalytic activity in catalyzing the xylose to prepare the biomass platform compound furfural but also could promote the application of functionalized ionic liquids.

Coumarin possesses the aromatic group and showed plentiful activities, such as antioxidant, preventing asthma and antisepsis. In addition, coumarin derivatives usually possess good solubility, low cytotoxicity and excellent cell permeability. In our study, we synthesized the compound bridge methylene tacrine (BMT), which has the classical pharmacophore structure of Tacrine (THA). Based on the principle of active substructure splicing, BMT was used as a lead compound and synthesized coumarin–BMT hybrids by introducing coumarin to BMT. In this work, 21 novel hybrids of BMT and coumarin were synthesized and evaluated for their inhibitory activity on AChE. All obtained compounds present preferable inhibition. Compound 8b was the most active compound, with the value of K_i as 49.2 nM, which was higher than Galantamine (GAL) and lower than THA. The result of molecular docking showed that the highest binding free energy was −40.43 kcal/mol for compound 8b, which was an identical trend with the calculated K_i.