A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Levulinic Acid Production: Comparative Assessment of Al-Rich Ordered Mesoporous Silica and Microporous Zeolite




AuthorsTaghavi Somayeh, Pizzolitto Cristina, Ghedini Elena, Menegazzo Federica, Cruciani Giuseppe, Peurla Markus, Eränen Kari, Heinmaa Ivo, Aho Atte, Kumar Narenda, Murzin Dmitry Yu, Salmi Tapio, Signoretto Michela

PublisherSpringer

Publication year2023

JournalCatalysis Letters

Journal name in sourceCATALYSIS LETTERS

Journal acronymCATAL LETT

Number of pages13

ISSN1011-372X

eISSN1572-879X

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-022-03955-y

Web address https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10562-022-03955-y


Abstract

In this work, the formation of levulinic acid (LA) as one of the top-twelve chemical building blocks from glucose was studied. In particular, the formulations of heterogeneous acid catalysts based on SBA-15, MCM-41 mesoporous silica was carried out and their performance in catalytic conversion of glucose to LA were assessed and compared with commercial H-Beta-25 (SiO2/Al2O3 = 25) microporous zeolite. The high surface area, suitable porosity, balanced acid sites were considered as the main factors of a proper catalytic performance. Thus, essential modification of mesoporous SBA-15 and MCM-41 materials was carried out by introducing Al in their structures for Lewis acid sites improvement. Alumina was introduced to SBA-15 by post synthesis evaporation impregnation method while it was embedded inside the MCM-41 mesoporous material during the synthesis. In addition, Bronsted acidity was introduced via post-synthesis grafting of sulfonic acid groups. The textural and morphological features and acidity of the materials were investigated using N2 physisorption, SEM, EDX, TEM, XRD and pyridine-FTIR. All catalysts were tested for aqueous glucose conversion in an autoclave at 180 degrees C. Al-MCM-SO3H has shown the best performance with 54% of LA yield after 4 h reaction. According to Py-FTIR introduction of alumina and sulfonic acid groups improved weak and medium Lewis and Brønsted acid sites. However, the Brønsted to Lewis acid site ratio (B/L) was higher for Al-MCM-SO3H compared to SBA-Al-SO3H leading the reaction pathway to LA. H-Beta-25 zeolite displayed a poor performance because of harsh medium and strong acid sites catalyzing humins formation.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 21:28