Identification of Sabatier Descriptors for Hydrodeoxygenation Activity and Selectivity on Supported Molybdenum Oxide Catalysts

While molybdenum oxide shows promise in deoxygenating lignin monomers to petrochemically relevant aromatics and alkenes, its current applicability is hindered by its tendency to oversaturate the aliphatic byproducts to alkanes, limiting the ability of the product stream to be directly integrated into the existing infrastructure. Previously, detailed kinetic experiments indicated that this parasitic alkane pathway can result from competitive C–O hydrogenolysis during deoxygenation rather than direct hydrogenation of alkenes. Here, we evaluate how modulating the properties of the molybdenum active site could ameliorate this pathway for short-chain (