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Abstract Rational design and construction of catalysts with regulable active sites for selective cleavage of lignin to produce aromatic monomers remain challenging. Herein, the authors report a new strategy for tuning the active sites of tetrahedral centers (Lewis acid sites) and octahedral centers (Brønsted acid sites) in Ni x Co 3− x O 4 through tailoring the non‐stoichiometric ratio of Ni and Co. The ratio of Ni and Co is experimentally optimized for the optimal acidic activity of catalytic cracking of lignin when x = 0.2. The Ni 0.2 Co 2.8 O 4 catalysts achieve an outstanding catalytic conversion (up to 81 wt%) for the lignin cleavage and excellent selective cleavage into aromatic monomers (up to 90.30 wt%), which is mainly attributed to the optimized electron rearrangement, adjustable active sites, and synergistic effect between these two active sites. This work provides a new concept to rationally design solid acid catalysts for the efficient conversion of lignin.
Qi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.