Magnesium Oxide‐Catalyzed Conversion of Chitin to Lactic Acid

Abstract

Although chitin, an N-acetyl-D-glucosamine polysaccharide, can be converted to valuable products by means of homogeneous catalysis, most of the chitin generated by food processing is treated as industrial waste. Thus, a method for converting this abundant source of biomass to useful chemicals, such as lactic acid, would be beneficial. In this study, we determined the catalytic activities of various metal oxides for chitin conversion at 533 K and found that MgO showed the highest activity for lactic acid production. X-ray diffraction analysis and thermogravimetry-differential thermal analysis showed that the MgO was transformed to Mg(OH) 2 during chitin conversion. The highest yield of lactic acid (10.8 %) was obtained when the reaction was carried out for 6 h with 0.5 g of the MgO catalyst. The catalyst could be recovered as a solid residue after the reaction and reused twice with no decrease in the lactic acid yield.

Shell waste valorization to chemicals: methods and progress

“…Following this, various metal oxide catalysts were assessed for the direct oxidation of chitin itself, with MgO exhibiting the most efficient catalytic activity, resulting in a significant yield of 10.8% lactic acid (LcA) as the major product at 260 °C in a 6 hour reaction. 216 The conversion of GA and NAG under similar reaction conditions showed LcA yields of 23.3% and 7.7%, respectively. While the catalyst demonstrated recyclability for the initial three runs, the first recycling revealed 15% Mg leaching.…”

Catalyst and Base-Free, Direct Oxidation of Chitin to Lactic Acid with Hydrogen Peroxide

“…Qi et al [23] used V 2 O 5 as catalyst and O 2 as oxidant to catalyze the conversion of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (NAG) to acetic acid under the condition of no alkali, and the yield reached 33.4%. Kun et al [24] explored the process of producing lactic acid from chitin by different metal oxides. When the amount of MgO catalyst was 0.5 g and the reaction time was 6 h, the highest yield of 10.8% of the lactic acid was obtained.…”