Tuning Metal Supported on Zirconia Catalysts for the Selective One-pot Step Hydrogenations of Levoglucosenone

MIRIAM PARREÑO; MARÍA B. COMBA; JAIME MAZARÍO; ROLANDO SPANEVELLO; MARCELO DOMINE; MARVIN CHÁVEZ-SIFONTES; ALEJANDRA SUÁREZ

Aachen

Congreso; 14th European Congress on Catalysis, EuropaCat 2019; 2019

DECHEMA e.V.

Nowadays, lignocellulosic biomass stands out as the only renewable alternative to produce organic chemicals[1]. In this sense, levoglucosenone (Scheme 1) is a cellulose derived chiral synthon widely used in organic synthesis[2]. More recently, the FuracellTM technology, a continuous process to convert cellulosic biomass into levoglucosenone[3], opened the possibility of producing, not only fine, but also commodity chemicals starting from this molecule. Following this idea, Huber and co-workers[4] offered and insight into how to transform this molecule into high added value products such as α,ω-diols, monomers of polyesters and polyurethanes. They reported the use of Pd on carbon, Al2O3 and SiO2-Al2O3 to obtain interesting products via hydrogenation, such as dihydrolevoglucosenone (Cyrene) and levoglucosanol. However, high hydrogen pressures and catalyst loadings, organic solvents, as well as catalytic deactivation remain as disadvantages for these catalytic processes. In this work the adequate combination of the specific metallic species (Pd, Pt) with the adequate support (SiO2, Al2O3, TiO2, ZrO2) is studied to carry out the selective hydrogenation of levoglucosenone to either Cyrene or levoglucosanol (Scheme 1), avoiding the aforementioned drawbacks, while understanding the required physicochemical properties to produce the desired hydrogenated product in highly selective one-pot processes.