The Tohoku Earthquake and the following nuclear accident have caused renewable energies such as the solar power, the wind power and biomass to get more attention than before. Among the renewable energies, liquid fuel such as biodiesel would be produced only from biomass and expected to be major alternative transportation fuels. In this paper, we attempted to prepare butyl levulinate through the acid catalysed solvolysis of cellulose powder and wood meal using 1-butanol in one step reaction system under atmospheric pressure. The result revealed that butyl levulinate was produced from the solvolysis of cellulose powder up to 60% of the theoretical yield while the yield of butyl levulinate from the solvolysis of wood meal was 0.3g (54% of hexose contained in wood meal was converted into butyl levulinate). These high yields suggested that our simple solvolysis process using alcoholic reaction media has high potential for conversion of cellulosic biomass into butyl levulinate.

Preparation of butyl levulinate through the acid catalysed alcoholysis of cellulosic biomass using a single reaction process

247th National Meeting (2014)

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