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

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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, Brønsted 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 °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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CATMAT Lab, Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and INSTM RUVe, via Torino 155, 30172, Venezia Mestre, Italy

    Somayeh Taghavi, Cristina Pizzolitto, Elena Ghedini, Federica Menegazzo & Michela Signoretto

  2. Physics and Earth Sciences Department, University of Ferrara, Via Saragat, 44122, Ferrara, Italy

    Giuseppe Cruciani

  3. Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine, Turku University, 20520, Turku, Finland

    Markus Peurla

  4. Laboratory of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Ȧbo Akademi University, 20520, Turku, Finland

    Cristina Pizzolitto, Kari Eränen, Atte Aho, Narendra Kumar, Dmitry Yu. Murzin & Tapio Salmi

  5. National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618, Tallin, Estonia

    Ivo Heinmaa

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  1. Somayeh Taghavi
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Correspondence to Michela Signoretto.

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Taghavi, S., Pizzolitto, C., Ghedini, E. et al. Levulinic Acid Production: Comparative Assessment of Al-Rich Ordered Mesoporous Silica and Microporous Zeolite. Catal Lett 153, 41–53 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-022-03955-y

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