Dehydration of glucose to 5-Hydroxymethlyfurfural on bifunctional carbon catalysts

Abstract The proposed study tries to reply on one important question concerning glucose dehydration: What is the role of bare or tandem Lewis/Bronsted acid sites in the reaction and which are better? A series of mono and bifunctional catalyst are designed and screened for the glucose dehydration reaction. The results clearly reveal that catalyst activity is a function of catalyst composition. The presence of Lewis sites the reaction toward first step isomerization, while the Bronsted acid dehydrate directly glucose to HMF via levoglucosane intermediate. This study proposed also a kinetic modelling of the included reactions and their contrast with the empirical observations.