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Catalytic hydrolysis of cellulose to levulinic acid by partly replacing sulfuric acid with Nafion® NR50 catalyst

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Abstract

Acid catalytic hydrolysis of cellulose to levulinic acid (LA) was conducted by partly replacing homogeneous catalyst sulfuric acid (H2SO4) with solid acid Nafion® NR50. With the presence of Nafion® NR50, 75% of H2SO4 catalyst can be saved, and a high LA yield, 40.4 wt%, was realized even without stirring the reaction solution. Although stirring favored the LA yield and shortened the reaction time, the deactivation of Nafion® NR50 was observed. In fact, non-stirring condition is advocated, under which the Nafion® NR50 still maintains excellent catalytic activity and reusability.

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Funding

This work was supported by the funding of the Engineering Research Center of None-food Biomass Efficient Pyrolysis and Utilization Technology of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes (2016GCZX009), the National Natural Science Foundations of China (21606045, 51476036), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (2017 A030313084), the Guangdong Innovation Research Team for Higher Education (2017KCXTD030), and the High-level Talents Project of Dongguan University of Technology (KCYKYQD2017017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center of None-food Biomass Efficient Pyrolysis and Utilization Technology of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, Guangdong, China

    Yongjun Xu, Shimin Kang & Wenbo Liao

  2. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Distributed Energy Systems, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, China

    Yongjun Xu, Guiheng Liu, Shimin Kang, Yukui Xiao & Pingju Yang

  3. Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA

    Jinxia Fu

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  1. Yongjun Xu
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  2. Guiheng Liu
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  3. Jinxia Fu
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  4. Shimin Kang
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Correspondence to Shimin Kang.

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Xu, Y., Liu, G., Fu, J. et al. Catalytic hydrolysis of cellulose to levulinic acid by partly replacing sulfuric acid with Nafion® NR50 catalyst. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 9, 609–616 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-019-00373-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-019-00373-w

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