Highly selective cleavage C-O ether bond of lignin model compounds over Ni/CaO-H-ZSM-5 in ethanol

Herein, 2-(2-methoxyphenoxy)-1-phenylethanol (β-O-4), 2-methoxyphenyl anisole (α-O-4) and 4-phenoxyphenol (4-O-5) were selected as typical lignin model compounds. Given the effectiveness of traditional acid-base catalysts for lignin depolymerisation, a novel Ni/CaO-H-ZSM-5(60) catalyst was prepared to investigate the difficulty level of C-O bond of three model compounds cleavage in ethanol. It was observed that Ni/CaO-H-ZSM-5(60) had prominent performance on the C-O bond cleavage at very mild conditions (140 °C, 1 MPa H₂). Among them, the C-O bond of α-O-4 and β-O-4 could be completely cleaved within 60 min. Although the C-O bond of 4-O-5 had high bond energy, 41.2% of conversion was occurred in 60 min. The introduction of CaO could regulate the acidity of H-ZSM-5 to enhance the ability to break C-O bonds. Moreover, the possible pathways of C-O ether bonds in three lignin model compounds cleavage were proposed in order to selectively obtain target products from the raw lignin degradation.