Biomass conversion poses a considerable opportunity to create sustainable methods to produce important commodity chemicals. The key challenge is achieving high selectivity. Current routes to convert biomass into chemicals involves hydrolysis of cellulose to produce glucose followed by isomerization to fructose and dehydration to 5-hydroxymethyl furfuraldehyde (HMF). Since HMF is considerable the top priority chemical to produce from biomass with high selectivity, our work has focused on creating catalysts that are selective for both glucose isomerization to fructose and fructose dehydration to HMF. For glucose isomerization, we have developed a tertiary amine-based catalyst immobilized on silica. Through tuning the catalyst design, a catalyst with high activity and high selectivity (&gt;80%). For fructose dehydration, a bifunctional catalyst has been developed involving acid sites and beneficial solvent interactions. Through increasing the number of solvent interactions, high selectivity is observed while using water as the solvent. Combined, these results are promising for the sustainable production of chemicals from biomass.

Increasing conversion selectivity for biomass relevant reactions through molecularly tuning catalyst design

256th National Meeting (2018)

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