Biomass to Fuel and Chemicals: Enabling Technologies

Insight into the alkaline earth metal salt promotion for alkali-catalyzed glucose isomerization

“…Based on the obvious negative carbon emission properties of biomass, the conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals has become a recognized sustainable strategy to achieve carbon neutrality. [1][2][3][4] Glucose, the most abundant monosaccharide in nature, can be directly hydrolyzed from starch and inedible cellulose and is also one of the basic raw materials for biobased platform compounds. [5][6][7][8] In many biorefinery processes, glucose must be first isomerized to fructose, which is considered more favorable for conversion than glucose.…”

“…41,42 At the same time, metal salts such as NaCl, MgCl 2 , and CaCl 2 can complex with fructose; [42][43][44][45] it is believed that this complexation can effectively improve the stability of fructose. Therefore, we here conducted a method to improve the yield of fructose from alkali-catalyzed glucose isomerization with alkaline earth metal salt addition, which mainly included: (1) investigating the side reaction of the alkali-catalyzed glucose isomerization; (2) screening the salts to promote the alkalicatalyzed glucose isomerization; (3) exploring the mechanism of calcium cation promotion for the alkali-catalyzed glucose isomerization through DFT calculation and NMR characterization; (4) obtaining fructose with high selectivity from the alkali-catalyzed glucose isomerization.…”