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An efficient route to highly organized, tunable macroporous-mesoporous alumina

A new class of catalytic materials is required with tailored pore architectures to accommodate bulky and/or viscous biobased feedstocks, for use in chemical synthesis. This is the first report of the preparation of bimodal porous alumina materials incorporating two well-defined pore networks with tunable macro- and meso-porosity. The new aluminas are amenable to quantitative modelling of their mass transport properties, so become attractive candidates for catalyst supports in liquid-phase chemistry and catalyst design. This work underpins three current EPSRC projects on biomass conversion to fuels and chemicals as well as a recently funded FP7 project CASCATBEL.