Dual acidic mesoporous KIT silicates enable one-pot production of γ-valerolactone from biomass derivatives via cascade reactions

Jian He, Hu Li, Yufei Xu and Song Yang

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 146, issue C, 359-370

Abstract: γ-Valerolactone (GVL) is an interesting bio-based platform molecule that is utilized as green solvent and a versatile building block for the synthesis of bio-fuels and chemicals. Herein, an investigation on the efficient production of GVL from biomass-based carbonyl compounds such as furfural, levulinic acid, and its esters using 2-propanol as H-donor and solvent over stable Zr-incorporated mesoporous silica (KIT-5) catalysts was presented. Both Lewis and Brønsted acid sites were generated by the introduction of Zr into KIT-5, and the acid density of the resulting Zr-KIT-5(Si/Zr) could be controlled by simply adjusting Si/Zr molar ratio. Among these bifunctional catalysts, Zr-KIT-5(10) showed superior catalytic performance in the production of GVL (>91% selectivity) from biomass-derived carboxides (ca. 94% conversion), which was demonstrated to positively correlate with its large amount of acidic sites and facile access of active sites to interconnected pores. Moreover, the spent catalyst held about 90% of its original activity in the sixth run. Due to the presence of Brønsted and Lewis dual acidic sites in Zr-KIT-5, the direct conversion of furfural to GVL was also permitted in a single pot via tandem reactions involving hydrogenation, ring-opening, secondary hydrogenation, and subsequent cyclization.

Keywords: Biomass conversion; Mesoporous silicate; γ-Valerolactone; Furfural; Transfer hydrogenation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119309395
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:146:y:2020:i:c:p:359-370

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.06.105

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().