Microwave-Assisted Conversion of Sucrose into 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural over Acidic Nanoporous Materials

Abstract

With increased worries of our Nations’ reliance on fossil fuels and their deleterious effects on the environment, researchers are concentrating on developing sustainable alternative sources for energy and chemicals. One potential starting resource that is worldwide distributed and renewable is biomass. Cellulose, the most plentiful source of biomass on earth, can be hydrolyzed into biofuel precursors such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). However, due to the poor solubility of cellulose and its robust crystalline structure, current methods available to degrade cellulose into these biofuel precursors are costly, result in low yields along with a large amount of waste. Generally, fructose is the preferred feedstock for the synthesis of HMF with high efficiency and selectivity. However, the large-scale production of HMF from fructose is limited due to the scarcity and the high cost of fructose. Therefore, it is desirable to use a cheaper renewable starting material for the synthesis of HMF such as sucrose. This study is conducted to develop an efficient one-pot process to synthesize HMF from biomass, particularly sucrose, using various sulfonated heterogeneous catalysts such as ordered mesoporous silica, bridged periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMO) and carbon materials. The HMF yields in the presence of such acidic nanoporous materials were comparable to those using much less environmentally-friendly metal-based catalysts.