Issue 10, 2013

Continuous flow nanocatalysis: reaction pathways in the conversion of levulinic acid to valuable chemicals

Abstract

The selective production of 2-methyltetrahydrofuran from levulinic acid has been effectively conducted using designed Cu based catalysts and compared with a commercial Pd/C system under microwave irradiation. Optimised conditions for the most active catalysts Cu-MINT (>90% conversion, 75% selectivity to MTHF) and Pd/C (78% conversion, 92% selectivity to MTHF) were further translated into a continuous flow process using the proposed catalysts to find out the deactivation of Cu-MINT under flow conditions (79 vs. 13% conversion with a switch in selectivity to products after 30 min in flow), the high stability of Pd/C (73 vs. 70% conversion at stable selectivity under analogous conditions to those of Cu-MINT) but, most importantly, different relevant pathways to valuable products from levulinic acid depending on the type of catalyst employed.

Graphical abstract: Continuous flow nanocatalysis: reaction pathways in the conversion of levulinic acid to valuable chemicals

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
30 May 2013
Accepted
29 Jul 2013
First published
31 Jul 2013

Green Chem., 2013,15, 2786-2792

Continuous flow nanocatalysis: reaction pathways in the conversion of levulinic acid to valuable chemicals

J. M. Bermudez, J. A. Menéndez, A. A. Romero, E. Serrano, J. Garcia-Martinez and R. Luque, Green Chem., 2013, 15, 2786 DOI: 10.1039/C3GC41022F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements