(697f) Catalytic Dehydration Platform Technology: Key Technology of Bio-Based Chemicals Derivatives

The catalytic conversion of biomass-derivative feedstocks for the synthesis of value-added fuels, chemicals and materials has been atracting much more attention. Biomass feedstocks are different, in a sense of oxygen content, from crude oil and natural gas. Thus the catalysts for the traditional chemical industry would not be selective and suitable enough for biomass transformation. Therefore, the design and controllable synthesis of solid catalysts would be the core research content for the efficient transformation of biomass. This presentation would introduce the research results in the field of catalytic dehydration of bio-based polyols and organic acid in our group.

Catalytic dehydration of lactic acid to acrylic acid has long been of interest, but the present catalytic performance, such as the selectivity to acrylic acid and the life-time of catalysts, are not satisfactory for industrial manufacture of bio-based acrylic acid. Recently, NaY based catalysts have been designed, controllable synthesis, and been used to the catalytic dehydration of lactic acid to acrylic acid. Based on our research results, some possible catalytic mechanism during catalytic dehydration of lactic acid to acrylic acid has been disclosed.

Isosorbide, a dehydration product of sorbitol, is an important pharmaceutical intermediate and a novel monomer for polymer modification which can improve the high temperature tolerance of the traditional polymers such as poly (ethylene terephthalate). The solid acid catalysts including metal phosphates and metal sulfate have been synthesized and used to catalyze the dehydration of sorbitol to isosorbide. In addition, some modified metal-phosphates catalysts and mesoporous metal oxide catalysts have been used to catalyze the dehydration of sorbitol to isosorbide, and the research results show that nanometer effect of nanoparticle and mesoporous phosphates have enhanced obviously the catalytic performance of sorbitol dehydration.