The energy-oriented utilization of non-food biomass has been and will continue to be an attractive issue to develop carbonneutral energy source. The green catalytic conversion of rice straw into useful organic chemicals as an alternative for fossil fuels is imperative so as to lower the current global problems. In this paper, a new green and feasible approach to direct conversion of natural rice straw into sugar alcohol together with other aqueous sugar through two steps: firstly hydrolyzed to glucose and other aqueous monosaccharide by acid from heterogeneous catalyst, and then glucose was hydrogenated using hydrogen by in situ supplied from ethanol steam reforming on metallic catalyst in one pot. The avoidance of high pressure hydrogen and use of real rice straw as raw material made the present process more feasible and practical. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.