Enhanced Brønsted Acidity and Hydrogenating Sites Generated on MoO3 during Acetone Hydrodeoxygenation

Abstract Metal oxides have attracted attention as catalysts for various reduction and oxidation reactions due to their abundance, inexpensiveness, and the possibility of combining different catalytic sites (e. g., acid‐base, redox, and oxygen vacancy sites). Previous results have demonstrated that metal oxides are promising candidates for the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) reaction, one of the processes that aim to upgrade biomass‐derived products by reducing their oxygen content. In this work, molybdenum oxide (MoO 3 ) was subjected to the acetone HDO reaction leading to new insights concerning the generation of molybdenum oxycarbides (MoO x C y ) on stream and their catalytic properties. The characteristics of the MoO x C y phase depended on the temperature and time on stream, affecting the balance of the different catalytic sites and the final products’ distribution. The intrinsic correlation between the active sites – mainly Brønsted/Lewis acid sites (AS) and hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis sites (HS) – and the reaction pathways was discussed in detail.