Catalytic Hydrolysis Using Weak-Acid Sites on Modified Carbon for Glucose Production from Cellulose

We introduce an approach to depolymerize cellulose by using mesoporous carbon nanoparticles to adsorb long chain glucans from the acid hydrolyzate and catalytically hydrolyze the adsorbed glucans using weak-acid sites, that are introduced via post-synthetic treatment of carbon, to form weakly adsorbing sugars such as monomer or short oligomeric fragments.