Zirconium–cyanuric acid coordination polymer: highly efficient catalyst for conversion of levulinic acid to γ-valerolactone

Abstract

Transformation of levulinic acid (LA) to γ-valerolactone (GVL) is essential for biomass conversion into value-added chemicals. The development of an efficient and heterogeneous catalyst for the above reaction has become a hot topic. In this work, a porous zirconium–cyanuric acid coordination polymer (Zr–CA) with an average pore diameter of 3.5 nm was successfully synthesized. As expected, the as-synthesized Zr–CA has very high activity for the catalytic transformation of LA and its esters to GVL. Systematic examinations indicated that both the acidic sites and the basic sites contributed significantly to the excellent catalytic performance of Zr–CA, which verified our assumption. This work provides a new route for designing cyanuric acid-based solid acid catalysts.