Inside Cover: Catalytic Biorefining of Plant Biomass to Non‐Pyrolytic Lignin Bio‐Oil and Carbohydrates through Hydrogen Transfer Reactions (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 33/2014)

Lignin solvolytically released from biomass may be of much lower molecular weights than currently believed. In their Communication on page 8634 ff. , R. Rinaldi and P. Ferrini exploit this feature for establishing a method that enables the isolation of lignin as a depolymerized oil and yields pulps amenable to enzymatic hydrolysis. The lignin oil is highly susceptible to hydrogenation under mild conditions, and therefore, a unique pathway for lignin valorization by heterogeneous catalysis has been established.