A new bifunctional nanobiocatalyst for the single cascade conversion of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) to sorbitol has been developed. The nanobiocatolyst is based on aggregates of magnetic nanoparticles (MNA) functionalized with chitosan (CS) and crosslinked with tripolyphosphate (TPP). It contains two types of catalytic centres: cellulase (Cel) and ultra-small Pd nanoparticles (NPs). The complete characterization of MNA-CSP-Pd-Cel and preliminary studies allowed us to select optimal conditions and cascade CMC into sorbitol in a yield of 80.4 % for 15 h at a temperature of 70 °C and a hydrogen pressure of 5 MPa. The yield demonstrated in this work is much higher than has been reported so far for the same cascade process.
