Themed collection Catalysis for sustainable development

Recent progress on non-furfural routes from sugar derivatives to valuable chemicals including chiral chemicals was reviewed.

It is science, not magic. Solar fuels can be obtained from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

Urea electrolysis is a promising energy-saving avenue for hydrogen production owing to the low cell voltage, wastewater remediation and abundant electrocatalysts.

This review gives a broad vision of the current progress of transition metals and noble metal based electrocatalysts for ethanol oxidation reaction.

The Sonogashira reaction is a cross-coupling reaction of a vinyl or aryl halide with a terminal alkyne to form a C–C bond.

This review examines the catalytic ethane dehydrogenation and dehydroaromatization in terms of characteristics of active sites and their reaction mechanisms.

5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a very important versatile platform compound derived from renewable biomass.

CO₂ hydrogenation to hydrocarbons over heterogeneous catalysts.

The reverse water gas shift reaction, its proposed mechanisms, currently used and proposed catalysts and an intensified version of the reaction are evaluated for their abilities to significantly reduced CO₂ atmospheric concentration.

This review highlights the recent advances using deep eutectic solvents (DESs), deep eutectic ionic liquids (DEILs), low-melting mixtures (LMMs) or low transition temperature mixtures (LTTMs) as green media as well as catalysts in organic reactions.

This review summarizes the recent progress in methanation catalysts for SNG production, which will provide insights for future catalysts design.

Elucidating the role of metal modification and confined hydrocarbon species in the aromatization of ethylene on zeolite catalysts.

New functional CS/GA/RGO/Pd composite hydrogels are prepared via a self-assembly process, demonstrating potential applications in catalysis as well as composite materials.

Ru-Dispersed N-doped carbon framework electrocatalysis the nitrogen reduction reaction and produces NH₃ under ambient conditions.

These new TM–B_β12 monolayers will display excellent catalytic performance for electroreduction of CO₂. Primary reduction product of Sc is CO (overpotential 0.45 V). Primary product Ti–Zn is CH₄, and Fe–B_β12 has 0.45 V overpotential.

A plasmonic AuPd bimetal-decorated GO/LDH nano-photocatalyst displays encouraging Suzuki coupling performance under visible light illumination.

Edge-sharing octahedral niobium oxides were used efficiently for the conversion of trioses to lactic acid under hydrothermal conditions.

A 3D nanometer-scaled NiO material with urchin-like structure was prepared via a facile route, and served as a highly efficient and durable catalyst for catalytic transfer hydrogenation of bio-based furfural to furfuryl alcohol using 2-propanol as H-donor and solvent.

An important activity/selectivity trade-off occurs at increased olefin oligomerization temperatures. Jet-range product decreases and paraffin formation increases at high oligomerization temperatures.

Catalytic pyrolysis of waste plastics using low cost binder-free pelletized bentonite clay has been investigated to yield pyrolysis oils as drop-in replacements for commercial liquid fuels such as diesel and gasohol 91.

Inductive and electrostatic effects were found to both play important roles for heterogeneous electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction on cobalt porphyrins.

Nitrogen reduction reaction barriers calculated by density functional theory quantify NRR activity and selectivity challenges.