Amphiphilic cellulose supported PdNi alloy nanoparticles towards biofuel upgrade under mild conditions

Abstract Design of stable high-performance heterogeneous catalysts has become crucial for efficient catalytic conversion of renewable biomass into high value-added chemicals. In this study, amphiphilic polymer support was synthesized by grafting hydrophobic groups onto hydrophilic cellulose nanocrystals and utilized as a support for PdNi alloy nanoparticles. The as-synthesized catalysts exhibited encouragingly high performance in the hydrodeoxygenation of vanillin under mild conditions.