Abstract
Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a promising platform chemical in future bio-based chemical industry for synthesis of a variety of furan derivatives. Studies on the HMF synthesis have focused mainly on saccharides as the feedstock. Recently, levoglucosenone (LGO), anhydrosugar available from cellulose pyrolysis, has been identified as an alternative feedstock, which can be converted to HMF under milder conditions only with acid and water as catalyst and solvent, respectively. To further explore the potential of this reaction, in this study, we demonstrated the HMF synthesis below 100°C within a few minutes at high yields. The employment of microtube reactor and high concentration sulfuric acid as catalyst was effective, leading to the highest HMF yield of 61.5%-C with the reaction selectivity over 80%. Kinetic analysis revealed that rapid heating after mixing LGO with the catalytic aqueous solution was essential to supress side reaction that generates degradation products from LGO. The reaction with glucose or fructose as feedstock under same conditions resulted in poor HMF yield.
Highlights
Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has vast potential to be an important building block in future bio-based chemical industry, and, often referred to as “sleeping giant” (Mukherjee et al, 2015)
The price is still high as a platform chemical to be competitive with petroleum derived chemicals (E4tech, RE-CORD, and WUR, 2015)
The rates of LGO conversion and HMF formation were improved with the H2SO4 concentration
Summary
Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has vast potential to be an important building block in future bio-based chemical industry, and, often referred to as “sleeping giant” (Mukherjee et al, 2015). As evidenced by many studies, HMF can be converted to chemicals used in a wide range of markets/applications such as fuels, solvents, polymers, and pharmaceuticals (van Putten et al, 2013). The industrial scale production has already been started by some companies. The price is still high as a platform chemical to be competitive with petroleum derived chemicals (E4tech, RE-CORD, and WUR, 2015). There are many factors affecting the price, most importantly, it is necessary to reduce the cost of chemicals needed to convert the feedstock into HMF. Development of more efficient process is required
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