5‐(Chloromethyl)Furfural Production from Glucose: A Pioneer Kinetic Model Development Exploring the Mechanism

Abstract

Conversion of glucose to 5-(chloromethyl)furfural (CMF) is one of the wellknown high yield unit processes in lignocellulosic biomass valorization. A kinetic modeling study was not reported for the reaction, owing to the complexity in quantification of CMF. Herein we have successfully developed a rapid, sensitive, and specific HPLC method (reverse phase) to quantify the generated CMF (range: 10–650 μg/mL) in a dichloroethane solvent. The Box–Behnken design of experiment method employed for the statistical optimization. A kinetic model was developed based on the homogeneous first-order kinetic model, and the results are in good agreement with the experiment data. The formation of CMF, 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural, formic acid, levulinic acid, and humins from glucose and HCl were modeled using a serial parallel reaction mechanism. The apparent activation energy (Ea) for glucose decomposition and CMF formation is 99 and 31 kJ/mol.