With rapidly growing attention on lignocellulosic biomass utilization, various technologies for converting carbohydrates in the biomass into valuable products have been investigated. Among biomass sourced carbohydrates, glucose exists abundantly in nature in both cellulose and starch, highlighting it as an important renewable resource. Fructose is an isomer of glucose. It is widely used as a sweetener in food and beverage industries. In addition, fructose is an important intermediate in the glucose conversion to furan-based chemicals, which can be further converted to fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and biopolymers. Therefore, it has drawn growing interests of many researchers how to efficiently isomerize glucose to fructose. This study is to develop a process to isomerize glucose to fructose in molten salt hydrates. The effects of different halide salts and reaction conditions (salt concentration, temperature, reaction time, and pH) on isomerization of glucose to fructose in the molten halide salt hydrates were investigated. Reaction kinetics and mechanism were also studied. Other possible glucose isomers such as mannose were monitored as well to observe the side-reactions during the process.

Effects of halide salt hydrates on isomerization of glucose to fructose

249th National Meeting (2015)

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