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Perspective Article Highlighted as Cover Art of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

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Recently, the research group led by Xuebin Lu & Na Ji published a perspective article on the great potentials of MHC (Metal-loaded Hollow Carbon Nanostructures) nanoreactors in building a sustainable energy system to improve a greener modern lifestyle.

Exploiting renewable biomass resources has become a requisite part of pursuing a green modern lifestyle. For years, biomass-derived molecules have been widely employed as initial feedstocks for the catalytic synthesis of value-added chemicals and liquid alkane fuels via the metal-catalyzed hydrogenation reactions. However, the development of metal supported catalysts is now strongly limited by many critical issues in aspects of catalytic reactivity, selectivity, and stability, which need to be further improved. In this context, devising new type of high-performance multifunctional catalysts is deemed to be the key to improve the overall reaction performance of biomass hydrogenation.

Over the past decade, metal-loaded hollow carbon nanostructures have been hailed as man-made nanoreactors (MHC nanoreactors) for extensive applications in dealing with energy and environmental issues due to their tailorable structure and electronic properties. The attractive superiority of MHC nanoreactors largely lies in their great potential to offer a tailorable microenvironment confined by hollow carbon nanostructures, where the interaction between the metal sites and substrate molecules could be facilely regulated. Such microenvironment effects not only simply describe the intrinsic characteristics of MHC nanoreactors, but also further emphasize potential interactions between hollow carbon nanostructures, active metal particles, and reactant molecules, which could be selectively enhanced, mitigated, or even eliminated via different engineering strategies. Through the targeted engineering of specific structural parameters of MHC nanoreactors with carbon matrices as well as metal nanoparticles for the precise manipulation of these microenvironment effects, the reaction behavior of the reactant molecules in MHC nanoreactors can be effectively controlled for desired reaction purposes.

In the paper, the microenvironment effects of MHC nanoreactors are described in detail, which can be divided into five dimensions, i.e., metal-support interaction effect, reactant enrichment effect, molecular sieving effect, spatial compartmentation effect and metal stabilization effect. The applications of MHC nanoreactors in the metal-catalyzed hydrogenation of typical biomass-derived molecules, such as levulinic acid, furfural, cinnamaldehyde, etc., are summarized.The potential applications of MHC nanoreactors for more extensive biomass conversion routes are reasonably predicted. Specifically, the application prospects of MHC nanoreactor in in-situ hydrogen source-assisted hydrogenations, hydrogenation-involved cascade-type reactions, hydrogenation product distribution modulation, stability prolongation and recyclability enhancement are proposed.In addition, some suggestions on the catalytic reactivity, selectivity, stability, and sustainability are also put forward.

The perspective article named “Metal-Loaded Hollow Carbon Nanostructures as Nanoreactors: Microenvironment Effects and Prospects for Biomass Hydrogenation Applications” was highlighted as the Cover Art of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (Top journal, IF:7.632) (https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c08422). The first author of this paper is Zhihao Yu (ORCID id:0000-0002-2437-0167), a PhD student from the School of Environmental Science & Engineering, and Tianjin University is the first affiliation.

In recent years, the research group of Xuebin Lu & Na Ji have made a series of scientific achievements in the catalytic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass wastes and their derived molecules.The relevant research works have been published in some high-level international journals, such as Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Green Chemistry, ChemSusChem, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.


By Yu Zhihao from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering

Editor: Eva Yin