Efficient Conversion of Glucose to Hydroxymethylfurfural: One‐pot Brønsted Base and Acid Promoted Selective Isomerization and Dehydration

Abstract

Development of elegant, selective, and efficient strategies for the production of value‐added platform chemicals from renewable feedstocks are in high demand to achieve the future needs and sustainable goals. In this context, an efficient acid‐promoted synthesis of highly valuable hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has been demonstrated from glucose, a major constituent of lignocellulosic biomass. The major challenge in the conversion of glucose to HMF is the selective isomerization of glucose to ketose, which in the present work has been successfully addressed through the amine‐mediated rearrangement of glucose to aminofructose under Amadori rearrangement. Importantly, subsequent dehydration step affords HMF and regenerates the amine employed in the first step, which could be readily recovered. In addition, scale‐up and successful integration in to one‐pot synthesis of HMF proves the efficiency and applicability of the present transformation in large scale application. In addition, the method was also successfully extended to other monosaccharides and disaccharides to produce HMF.