Glycerol can be obtained as a by-product during biodiesel manufacture. It is important to convert glycerol to value-added products. Glycerol esterification with acetic acid is one of the most promising approaches for glycerol utilization. It is usually difficult to obtain diacetin with good activity and selectivity. In this work, glycerol esterification with acetic acid over different metal oxides, such as Bi2O3, Sb2O3, SnO2, TiO2, Nb2O5 and Sb2O5, was investigated. It was found that in the six investigated metal oxides, only Sb205 resulted in good activity and selectivity to diacetin. Under the optimized conditions, the glycerol conversion reached 96.8%, and the selectivity to diacetin reached 54.2%, while the selectivity to monoacetin and triacetin was 33.2% and 12.6%, respectively. The catalysts were characterized with FT-IR spectra of adsorbed pyridine, which indicated that in the six investigated metal oxides, only Sb2O5 possessed Bronsted acid sites strong enough to protonate adsorbed pyridine. The good catalytic activity and selectivity to diacetin might be mainly attributable to the Bronsted acid sites of Sb2O5. Reusability tests showed that with 5b205 as catalyst, after six reaction cycles, no significant change in the glycerol conversion and the selectivity to diacetin was observed.
Direct conversion of fructose-based carbohydrates to 5-ethoxymethylfurfural （EMF） catalyzed by Lewis acid in ethanol was investigated. It was found that BF3.（Et）20 was favorable for 5-hydroxymethylfurfural （HMF） etherification to EMF. BF3.（Et）20 combination with A1C13.6H20 with the molar ratio of 1 was an effective catalyst system for synthesis of EMF from fructose-based carbohydrates. 55.0%, 45.4% and 23.9% of EMF yields were obtained from fructose, inulin and sucrose under optimized conditions, respectively.
From both fundamental and practical perspectives, the production of chemicals from biomass re-sources using high-efficiency non-precious metal catalysts is important. However, many processes require addition of stoichiometric or excess quantities of base, which leads to high energy consump-tion, leaching problems, and side reactions. In this study, we investigated the high-efficiency oxida-tive esterification of furfural to methylfuroate by molecular oxygen with a Co-N-C/MgO catalyst. The catalyst was prepared by direct pyrolysis of a cobalt（Ⅱ） phenanthroline complex on MgO at 800℃ under N2 atmosphere. From furfural, 93.0% conversion and 98.5% selectivity toward methylfuroate were achieved under 0.5 MPa O2 with reaction at 100 ℃ for 12 h without a basic additive. The con-version and selectivity were much higher than those obtained with cobalt catalysts produced by pyrolysis of a cobalt（Ⅱ） phenanthroline complex on activated carbon or typical basic supports, in-cluding NaX, NaY, and CaO. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission elec-tron microscopy, and experimental results revealed that the high efficiency of Co-N-C/MgO for pro-duction of methylfuroate was closely related to the cobalt-nitrogen-doped carbon species and its catalytic ability in hydrogen abstraction. In contrast, Co-N-C（HCl） that synthesized by removing MgO with HCl from Co-N-C/MgO, as the catalyst produced mainly an acetal as a condensation prod-uct, and chloride ions had a negative effect on the oxidative esterification. Although the catalytic performance of the cobalt-nitrogen-doped carbon species was greatly affected by HCl treatment, it could be recovered to a great extent by addition of MgO. Moreover, changes in the oxygen pressure hardly affected the oxidative esterification of furfural with Co-N-C/MgO. This study not only pro-vides an effective approach to prepare methylfuroate, but also for designing high-performance non-precious metal catalysts for the oxidative esterificatio
Efficient catalytic oxidation of ethylbenzene to acetophenone was realized using the catalytic system of cobalt zeolitic imidazolate framework ZIF-67/N-hydroxyphthalimide （NHPI） under mild conditions. 95.2% conversion of ethylbenzene with 90.3% selectivity to acetophenone could be obtained at 373 K under 0.3 MPa 02 for 9 h. The results show that there exists synergetic effect between ZIF-67 and NHPI. 1-Phenylethyl hydroperoxide （PEHP） was generated via a radical process involving the hydrogen abstraction from ethylbenzene by phthalimide N-oxyl, and subsequently effectively decomposed to acetophenone by ZIF-67.
