Abstract
The catalytic valorization of biomass to afford synthetically useful small molecules is essential for sustainable biorefinery processes. Herein, we present a mild cascaded electrochemical protocol for converting furoic acid (FA), a common biomass-derived feedstock, into a versatile platform chemical, gamma-butyrolactone (GBL). All involved species participate in the desired redox pathway with high selectivity: FA was electrochemically oxidized with 84.2% selectivity to 2(5H)-furanone (2-FO), the olefin of which was then hydrogenated to yield GBL with 98.5% selectivity. We identified that a certain temperature is an important factor in enabling the one-pot reaction as it promotes thermal desorption of the key intermediate. The reaction was scalable to gram-scale, producing high-purity GBL isolated through a simple solvent extraction from a 500-mL electrolysis scale reaction.
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