Production of benzoic acid from wood lignin

Abstract

Lignin is the most abundant renewable aromatic recourses in nature. Herein we report a new biorefinery for the production of benzoic acid from lignin through a two-steps strategy. First the Reductive-catalytic-fractionation-obtained lignin monomers was hydro-deoxygenated to alkylbenzenes over a porous CoMoS (CoMoS-P) catalyst, the porous structure of CoMoS-P significantly improved the hydrodeoxygenation reactivity. Then alkylbenzenes was oxidized to benzoic acid over NHPI/Mn(OAc)2 with O2 as the oxidant. For a result, 54 mg of benzoic acid can be obtained from 1 g of pine wood lignin.