Issue 17, 2019

An electrocatalytic route for transformation of biomass-derived furfural into 5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone

Abstract

Development of efficient strategies for biomass valorization is a highly attractive topic. Herein, we conducted the first work on electrocatalytic oxidation of renewable furfural to produce the key bioactive intermediate 5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone (HFO). It was demonstrated that using H2O as the oxygen source and metal chalcogenides (CuS, ZnS, PbS, etc.) as electrocatalysts, the reaction could proceed efficiently, and the CuS nanosheets prepared in this work showed the best performance and provided high HFO selectivity (83.6%) and high conversion (70.2%) of furfural. In addition, the CuS electrocatalyst showed long-term stability. Mechanism investigation showed that furfural was oxidized to HFO via multistep reactions, including C–C cleavage, subsequent ring opening and oxidation, and intramolecular isomerization.

Graphical abstract: An electrocatalytic route for transformation of biomass-derived furfural into 5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
20 Jan 2019
Accepted
25 Mar 2019
First published
25 Mar 2019
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 4692-4698

An electrocatalytic route for transformation of biomass-derived furfural into 5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone

H. Wu, J. Song, H. Liu, Z. Xie, C. Xie, Y. Hu, X. Huang, M. Hua and B. Han, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 4692 DOI: 10.1039/C9SC00322C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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