Base-Free, Vanadium-Catalyzed Conversion of Chitin into Acetic Acid under Low Oxygen Pressure

Abstract

The "shell biorefinery" has been proposed and developed rapidly in recent years, which valorizes the underestimated chitin biopolymer from oceanic waste to complement the lignocellulosic biomass for renewable chemicals. Herein, we exploited a simple and effective method to convert chitin biomass into acetic acid (AA) by using vanadium pentoxide (V 2 O 5 ) and oxygen gas (O 2 ) in base-free water, which makes the process more environmentally and economically favorable than previous methods. Under optimal conditions, the highest AA yield was obtained in 33.4% and 30.0% from the chitin monomer N-acetyl-Dglucosamine (NAG) and ball milled chitin (BM chitin) polymer. The V 2 O 5 catalyst has multifunctionally facilitated the hydrolysis, deacetylation, and subsequent oxidation into AA. FTIR and XRD analyses were conducted for the solid residues after the reaction. The FTIR spectra of the solid residues highly resembled that of chitin, inferring that chitin hydrolysis into NAG probably happened prior to deacetylation. Besides, XRD data demonstrated that the reaction system could effectively destruct the crystalline regions during the reaction. The study demonstrated a new catalytic approach for chitin biorefinery to renovate the shell waste into valuable chemicals.

Progress in Catalytic Conversion of Renewable Chitin Biomass to Furan-Derived Platform Compounds

“…Under optimized conditions, the combination of H-β zeolite and dilute acetic acid aqueous solution gave the highest HMF yield of 15 mol% to 28 mol% depending on the molecular weight of the parent chitosan. Acetic acid as a "green" organic acid can be produced from biomass-based feedstock [38,39]. Unfortunately, the obvious activity loss of recovered H-β zeolite was observed, and only half the HMF yield compared to fresh H-β zeolite was obtained.…”

Recent Progress in the Chemical Upcycling of Plastic Wastes

“…[67] Biomass resources include various renewable and abundant materials such as cellulose, chitin, and others that can be utilized for chemical or fuel production. [68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79] The co-pyrolysis of plastic and biomass furnishes a beneficial strategy to possibly improve the quality of gas or liquid fuels, attenuate the carbon emissions, and aid the waste management (see Figure 9). The co-pyrolysis of pinewood and waste plastics such as PET, PP, and others has facilitated syngas production in the gas phase and suppressed char formation, in which the synergy between biomass and plastic enhanced the conversion efficiency and flammable gas yield.…”

Palladium nanoparticles on chitin-derived nitrogen-doped carbon materials for carbon dioxide hydrogenation into formic acid

“…People have explored novel transformation routes to synthesize diverse valuable platform chemicals and a variety of complex molecules from chitin and its derivatives. 17,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69] Using chitin as the feedstock to fabricate N-doped carbon materials offers a simple, sustainable, environmentally benign and inexpensive way, bypassing the engagement of external nitrogen additives/ templates. [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81] To the best of our knowledge, Pd on N-doped carbon materials directly derived from chitin/shrimp shell waste has not yet been attempted for CO 2 /bicarbonate hydrogenation into FA.…”