The 6th International Conference on Biomass Energy (ICBE2018)

492 / 2018-09-09 10:35:15

Selective oxidation of biomass-derived 5-hydroxymethylfurfura

Plenary track > G.Platform Technology

Renewable biomass is the is the most promising renewable source of available organic carbon.1-5 Catalytic conversion of biomass can produce not only secure energy but also petrochemical-derived chemical supplies. 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is an important platform molecule. It can be easily produced from the dehydration of xylose and fructose and oxidation of HMF can generate fuel and value-added chemicals. As shown in Figure 1, there are carbonyl and hydroxyl groups in HMF. The catalytic oxidation of HMF can produce many important furanic compounds and maleic anhydride (MA). Moreover, 2,5-furandicarboxylicacid (FDCA) can also be obtained by oxidation of carbonyl and hydroxyl group in HMF. FDCA is a promising alternative for terephthalic acid and the Coca-Cola company has used bio-based polyethylene furanoate (PEF) produced from FDCA for bottles in replace of traditional petrochemical-derived polyethylene terephthalate (PET) produced from terephthalic acid. Our group has successfully achieved the selective oxidation of HMF to 2,5-diformylfuran (DFF), 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furancarboxylic acid (HFCA), and FDCA over various kinds of supported metal catalysts by thermal-process.6-10 Recently, we designed a novel photocatalyst of cobalt thioporphyrazine (CoPz) dispersed on g-C3N4 (abbreviated as CoPz/g-C3N4), which exhibits excellent catalytic activity towards the selective oxidation of HMF into FDCA under simulated sunlight using oxygen molecules in air as a benign oxidant.11 Furthermore, our group have found biomass derived nitrogen-doped carbon materials