An electrocatalytic route for transformation of biomass-derived furfural into 5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone. Issue 17 (2nd April 2019) - Wu, Haoran
Abstract : An electrocatalytic route was developed for the first time for conversion of biomass-derived furfural to bioactive 5-hydroxy-2(5 H )-furanone over CuS nanosheets using H2 O as the oxygen source. Abstract : Development of efficient strategies for biomass valorization is a highly attractive topic. Herein, we conducted the first work on electrocatalytic oxidation of renewable furfural to produce the key bioactive intermediate 5-hydroxy-2(5 H )-furanone (HFO). It was demonstrated that using H2 O as the oxygen source and metal chalcogenides (CuS, ZnS, PbS, etc. ) as electrocatalysts, the reaction could proceed efficiently, and the CuS nanosheets prepared in this work showed the best performance and provided high HFO selectivity (83.6%) and high conversion (70.2%) of furfural. In addition, the CuS electrocatalyst showed long-term stability. Mechanism investigation showed that furfural was oxidized to HFO via multistep reactions, including C–C cleavage, subsequent ring opening and oxidation, and intramolecular isomerization.