Al-based Metal Organic Framework for Efficient Conversion of Glucose into 5- HydroxyMethylFurfural: Effect of Functionalized Linker of Catalysts and Reaction Parameters on HMF Yield

Abstract

There are many investigations into developing modern technologies for producing energy from renewable biomasses due to the limitation of fossil fuels. HMF has a wide range of applications that can be used to produce bio-based fuels. It also has more reactive characteristics than other furans due to its hydroxyl group. HMF can be produced from glucose or fructose in an acid-catalyzed process. Many studies have been made in this field, and they used homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts; however, few used MOFs as support catalysts, which showed excellent characteristics in producing HMF and reported outstanding results. This project aims to test aluminum-based MOF, which has more substantial acidity sites than Zr-based ones, which will increase the rate of isomerization/dehydration reaction to form 5-HMF. Moreover, reaction conditions like temperature, catalyst regeneration and catalyst loading will be investigated in this study. Al-based metal-organic frameworks, Mil-53 NH2, and Mil-53 NHRSO3H with different concentrations of TFA will be synthesized, TFA will be used to form defects in the Mofs and study its effects on the reaction yield and mechanism. The dehydration reaction of glucose will be launched using a reflux reaction system to produce 5-HMF. The Mofs will be characterized and analyzed to ensure their optimality, and the products will be measured and analyzed using HPLC to calculate the yield of 5-HMF production. The highest yield was reached by Nd-Mil-53 NHrSO3H without defections of 59%, while 3d-Mil-53 NH2 had the lowest yield of 49%; so, the concentration of TFA affects negatively on the yield of the reaction, where the yield decreases when the concentration of TFA acid increases for both catalysts. In addition, by varying the reaction temperature and catalyst loading, results show the optimal catalyst loading was 50 grams, and the optimal temperature was 140°C.