Efficient Cleavage of Lignin Model Compounds into Phenols and Aldehydes over NiOOH Catalyst

The highly-efficient utilization of lignin and its derivatives is of great importance. Phenylacetaldehyde, as an important industrial raw material, is rarely reported to be directly obtained from biomass sources via thermal catalytic transformation. In this work, we found that NiOOH catalyst could efficiently catalyze the cleavage of β-O-4 lignin model compound to phenylacetaldehyde and phenol in water without need of any exogenous hydrogen. The catalytic mechanism study indicates that NiOOH could catalyze the elimination of C_α−OH to form an enol ether intermediate, which is then hydrated to phenylacetaldehyde and phenol.