(330b) Elucidating Structure-Properties Relations for the Design of Highly Selective Carbon-Based HMF Sorbents

Continuously increasing energy demands in a fragile global market and in the face of growing environmental concerns motivate the drive to develop sustainable energy resources like plant biomass for replacing or augmenting current petroleum-derived fuels and chemicals [1-3].  One of numerous challenges facing the biorefinery is the selective and efficient production of important chemical products such as 5-hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF).  HMF production from fructose dehydration in DMSO with various catalytic systems has shown superior selectivity and high yields [3, 4].  Yet, the subsequent need for energy-intensive separation of HMF from HMF/fructose/DMSO mixtures challenges the practical feasibility of this process.  Microporous carbon materials have shown promise as substrates for alternative adsorption-based separations [5], but the origin of HMF selectivity and adsorption capacity, and thereby structure-properties relations enabling rational design of enhanced sorbents, has remained elusive. Through systematic quantification of the functionality and texture of various commercial (BP2000, Norit1240) and synthetic carbons (three-dimensionally ordered macroporous carbons; mesoporous carbons), we link, for the first time, adsorption capacity and HMF adsorption selectivity to two tunable materials properties of the carbon sorbents: micropore texture and oxygenate functionality (i.e., carbon polarity).  In the process, we exploit these newly elucidated structure-properties relations for realizing a class of synthetic carbons with sub-micron particulate morphology that achieve more than 60% higher selectivity and more than 20% higher capacity for HMF over fructose as compared to the best performing commercial product, BP2000.

References

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[5] N. Rajabbeigi, R. Ranjan, M. Tsapatsis, Microporous Mesoporous Mater., 158 (2012) 253-256.