MECHANISM AND KINETICS FOR CATALYTIC CONVERSION OF CELLULOSE TO ETHYLENE GLYCOL

摘要

Biomass is the only renewable organic carbon in nature. The efficient conversion of biomass into liquid fuels and chemicals is of high importance to the partial replacement of fossil resource with renewable biomass and the decrease of CO2 emission. Among others, the one-pot catalytic conversion of cellulose into ethylene glycol (EG) is one of the most interesting processes attributed to the high efficiency of tungsten-based catalysts and the huge market of EG (～20 million tonnes per year) as the monomer in the plastic industry. This new process was discovered by our group in 2008.1 Since then, various catalyst formulations have been developed towards the enhancement of the EG yield (EG yield was up to 75%) as well as the understanding of the reaction mechanism.2-14 Nevertheless, the reaction kinetics is still a great challenge owing to the complicated nature of the consecutive reactions and the difficulties in identifying various intermediates.