One-step synthesis of gasoline fuels from γ-valerolactone with high selectivity over Cu/HZSM-5 bifunctional catalyst

Direct synthesis of transportation liquid fuels from renewable biomass-based resources via gamma-valerolactone (GVL) is a highly attractive but challenging target. The current conversion of biomass-derived GVL to liquid fuels suffers from low selectivity or multiple operation steps with high energy consumption. Herein, we reported a simple and efficient way for the high-selective conversion of GVL into gasoline fuels over designed Cu/HZSM-5 bifunctional catalyst in a single fixed-bed reactor. The excellent catalytic performance of 99.9 % conversion of GVL with 85.3 % selectivity to C5+ hydrocarbons (mainly C-5-C-12) and good stability were obtained. We demonstrated that the interfacial sites composed of metallic Cu and proton acid of HZSM-5 played a key role in determining the performance via providing a spontaneous C-O bond breaking path of GVL, facilitating the formation of pentene intermediate that could be further converted to gasoline fuels through a series of aromatization, alkylation and oligomerization reactions.