A paper titled "Chemocatalytic conversion of cellulosic biomass to methyl glycolate, ethylene glycol, and ethanol" delivered by Aiqin Wang group was published in ChemSusChem, and was selected as Very Important Paper in this issue.

Articlelink: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cssc.201601714/full

Production of chemicals and fuels from renewable cellulosicbiomass is important for the creation of a sustainable society,and it critically relies on the development of new and efficienttransformation routes starting from cellulose. Here, a chemocatalytic conversion route from cellulosic biomass to methyl glycolate (MG), ethylene glycol (EG), and ethanol (EtOH) is reported. By using a tungsten-based catalyst, cellulose is convertedinto MG with a yield as high as 57.7 C% in a one-pot reactionin methanol at 240^oC and 1 MPa O₂, and the obtained MG canbe easily separated by distillation. Afterwards, it can be nearlyquantitatively converted to EG at 200^oC and to EtOH at 280^oCwith a selectivity of 50% through hydrogenation over a Cu/SiO₂ catalyst. By this approach, the fine chemical MG, the bulkchemical EG, and the fuel additive EtOH can all be efficientlyproduced from renewable cellulosic materials, thus providinga new pathway towards mitigating the dependence on fossilresources.

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Strategic PriorityResearch Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.