Cellulose and even spruce can be converted efficiently into valuable platform chemicals via combined hydrolysis and hydrogenation in the aqueous phase. Thereby, heteropoly acids together with supported ruthenium catalysts show not only high activity but also remarkable selectivity to sugar alcohols reaching up to 81% yield of C₄ to C₆sugar alcohols in only 7 h at 160 °C.

A catalytic system capable of reaching high performance in the hydrogenolysis of cellulose at low reaction temperature and short reaction times has been developed. Therefore, supported noble metal catalysts based on Pt, Pd and Ru have been combined with dilute mineral acids. A broad variable set in terms of type of noble metal, type of acid, acid concentration and reaction time could be evaluated based on chemical interpretation and supported by a Design of Experiment (DoE) approach. The variables significantly influenced conversion of cellulose, product range and selectivity towards sugar alcohol formation. Thus, at 160 °C, above 60% yield in sugars and sugar alcohols with 84% selectivity at a cellulose conversion of 72% could be reached. Besides, glycerol, propylene glycol, ethylene glycol and methanol were formed as additional valuable by-products leading to an overall carbon utilization above 89%. Furthermore, the concept was successfully transferred to real feedstocks in the form of spruce reaching close to 60% conversion in only one hour reaction time.

Water is essential to attain good performance in a hydrogenation reaction with a ruthenium catalyst.

Experimental and theoretical approaches are combined for optimizing Ru catalysts for hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA) with formic acid (FA) as a hydrogen source into γ-valerolactone (GVL). Particle size and influence of Ru precursor are considered as crucial parameters.