TiN‐Cu Heterogeneous Nanocatalysts for Effective Depolymerisation of Oxidised Lignin

Abstract Lignin is one of the important resource for production of aromatics from lignocellulosic biomass. Effective depolymerisation of lignin is dependent on improvement of successful strategies for production of lower blocks of chemicals from lignin. Herein, a successful strategy for lignin depolymerisation is proposed based on, a two‐step selective oxidation and hydrogenolysis sequence, which efficiently cleaves lignin intermolecular bonds. The first step of this procedure is selective oxidation of lignin, which facilitates the lignin cleavage. The second step is hydrogenolysis conducted in the presence of titanium nitride supported copper (TiN−Cu) nanocatalysts. This two‐step lignin depolymerization produced more than 56 wt % valuable single‐ring aromatic compounds. The TiN−Cu nanocatalysts synthesised were inexpensive, effective and proven to have superior activity comparable to traditional noble metal based catalysts.