A carbon-negative route for sustainable production of aromatics from biomass-derived aqueous oxygenates

Sustainable technologies and efficient process design in chemical synthesis are in great demand for achieving a low-carbon society. Here, a sustainable approach for producing aromatics is designed via a biomass-derived carbon-negative route. A target aromatic yield of up to 50% was achieved using an industrial aqueous oxygenate mixture as the feedstocks. Such high performance is ascribed to the Zn modified ZSM-5 zeolites, which were proved to introduce synergistic catalysis involving Lewis acid sites and Brönsted acid sites, and were essential to aromatize these oxygenates efficiently. This approach provides a promising route for converting biomass-derived complex mixtures to valuable chemicals toward the carbon-neutral goal.