Efficient and selective conversion of sucrose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural promoted by ammonium halides under mild conditions

Article abstract of DOI:10.1016/j.carres.2011.11.013

The highly efficient and selective production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from sucrose has been achieved in the presence of metal chlorides and ammonium halides under mild conditions. Notably, an 87% yield of HMF from sucrose was obtained with a catalyst system composed of CrCl₃ and NH₄Br at 100 °C for 1.0 h in N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) solvent. The effect of the reaction temperature and time was investigated in detail, and a possible mechanism for this catalytic process has been proposed. In addition, NH₄Br is an effective promoter in the conversion of glucose and fructose to HMF.

Full text of DOI:10.1016/j.carres.2011.11.013

Carbohydrate Research 347 (2012) 182–185
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Carbohydrate Research
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Note
Efficient and selective conversion of sucrose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural
promoted by ammonium halides under mild conditions
a
a,
Chao Wang a, Litang Fu a, Xinli Tong a,b, , Qiwu Yang , Wenqin Zhang
⇑
⇑
a Department of Chemistry, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, PR China
b School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, PR China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
The highly efficient and selective production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from sucrose has been
achieved in the presence of metal chlorides and ammonium halides under mild conditions. Notably, an
87% yield of HMF from sucrose was obtained with a catalyst system composed of CrCl3 and NH4Br at
100 °C for 1.0 h in N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) solvent. The effect of the reaction temperature and
time was investigated in detail, and a possible mechanism for this catalytic process has been proposed.
In addition, NH4Br is an effective promoter in the conversion of glucose and fructose to HMF.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Received 24 September 2011
Received in revised form 8 November 2011
Accepted 12 November 2011
Available online 19 November 2011
Keywords:
Dehydration
Ammonium bromide
Sucrose
5-Hydroxymethylfurfural
Biomass conversion
Diminishing fossil fuel reserves, global warming, and the result-
ing energy security issues have stimulated the search for new
renewable energy resources.1,2 In the chemical industry, abundant
biomass resources, including carbohydrates, are being studied as
potential renewable carbon sources for liquid fuels and other valu-
able chemicals.3–8 In particular, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF),
one of the most important intermediates derived from biomass
feedstocks, has gradually become a platform chemical from which
a variety of target molecules can be synthesized.9–12 In recent years,
the efficient conversion of sugars into HMF has received a great deal
of attention.13–16 Although fructose has been shown to be the pre-
ferred feedstock for a high HMF yield,17,18 it is clear that generation
of ample amounts of HMF will require more inexpensive and abun-
dantly available raw materials, such as glucose and sucrose. Su-
crose, a disaccharide consisting of glucose and fructose, is widely
present in the plant kingdom. Thus, in addition to glucose, which
is derived from starch and cellulose, sucrose is a key low-molecu-
lar-weight carbohydrate resource to produce chemicals.10
system, and an HMF yield of 50% was achieved. The reactor system
was composed of an aqueous phase modified with DMSO and an
organic extracting phase consisting of a 7:3 (w/w) MIBK–2-butanol
mixture. Takagaki et al.22 reported that a 54% yield of HMF can be
produced from sucrose in a simple one-pot synthesis using a
combination of Mg–Al hydrotalcite (HT) and Amberlyst-15. In
these reports, the yields of HMF are relatively low. The apparent
reason is that only the fructose moiety of sucrose was efficiently
converted into HMF, which left most of glucose molecules unre-
acted.24 Recently, catalytic systems including metallic halides
and ionic liquids were used in the conversion of sucrose, and good
results were obtained. Hu et al.25 found that SnCl4 can efficiently
convert sucrose to HMF in 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetra-
fluoroborate ([BMIM]BF4), and the yield was as high as 65%. Qi
et al.26 studied the production of HMF from sucrose in 1-butyl-3-
methyl imidazolium chloride ([BMIM]Cl) with CrCl3 as the catalyst,
and an HMF yield of 76% was achieved in 5 min with microwave
heating at 100 °C. Although promising, these methods depend on
the use of expensive ionic liquids as solvents. Therefore, it is
important to develop a cost-effective technique that can process
both fructose and glucose molecules, thereby making efficient
use of carbons in sucrose.
To date, a few investigations on HMF production from sucrose
have been reported. Mineral acids,19,20 solid acids,21–23 ionic
liquids,24 and metallic compounds25–28 have been employed as cat-
alysts for the dehydration of sucrose in multiple reaction media,
including water, organic solvents, ionic liquids, and biphasic
water–organic systems. Chheda et al.19 studied the conversion of
sucrose to HMF using HCl as the catalyst in a biphasic reactor
In this paper, a new catalyst system, composed of a metal chlo-
ride and an ammonium halide, was employed to form HMF from
sucrose under mild conditions. Among the different ammonium
halides used as promoters, NH4Br led to the highest HMF yield
from sucrose, which was 87% using CrCl3 as the catalyst.
⇑
Corresponding authors. Tel.: +86 22 27407999 (W.Z.), +86 22 60214259 (X.T.).
E-mail addresses: tongxinli@tju.edu.cn, tongxli@sohu.com (X. Tong),
For the catalytic conversion of sucrose with metal chlorides,
CrCl3 was first chosen as the catalyst, and a variety of alkali metal
zhangwenqin@tju.edu.cn (W. Zhang).
0008-6215/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.carres.2011.11.013

C. Wang et al. / Carbohydrate Research 347 (2012) 182–185
183
Table 1
also better than those of alkali metal chlorides (entry 8). Similar
studies were performed with other metal chloride catalysts
(entries 11–13). When SnCl4–NH4Br was used in the conversion
of sucrose, an HMF yield of 66% was achieved (entry 11), which
is comparable to results obtained previously.25 If a metal chloride
catalyst is not present, an HMF yield of 40% can still be obtained
in the presence of NH4Br (entry 14).
Dehydration of sucrose with different systemsa
Entry
Catalyst
Promoterb
Yieldc (%)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
SnCl4
SnCl2
FeCl3
no
No
LiCl
NaCl
KCl
LiBr
66
64
67
63
77
79
77
79
87
73
66
48
42
40
To explain the good results for NH4Br, a possible mechanism
that is consistent with the data is shown in Figure 1. The conver-
sion of sucrose to HMF involves the following three steps: (1)
hydrolysis breaks the glycosidic bond, converting sucrose into glu-
cose and fructose; (2) glucose is isomerized into fructose; (3) fruc-
tose is dehydrated to form HMF. As is known, ammonium halides
(except NH4F) formed by the reaction of a strong acid (a hydrogen
halide) with a weak base (ammonia). A hydrolysis reaction in
which the ammonium ions react with water to yield hydronium
ions might occur during the dehydration of the carbohydrate and
thereby decrease the pH of the reaction system. Acidic conditions
are favorable for the hydrolysis of sucrose and the subsequent con-
version of fructose to HMF, because H+ can contribute to the forma-
tion of intermediates I and III. Therefore, NH4Br is more effective
than alkali metal bromides in sucrose conversion. In addition, the
halide additive must play two different roles in the conversion of
sucrose: serving as a ligand for the catalytic metal center in the
chelate complex (intermediate II) and attacking the fructofurano-
syl oxocarbenium ion (intermediate IV) to form intermediate V,
just like in glucose conversion.29 Bromide has better coordinating
abilities than iodide and better nucleophilicity than chloride, so
it is an optimal additive for the conversion of both the glucose
and fructose moieties of sucrose. This is the reason why NH4Br
exhibits a better effect than NH4Cl and NH4I in the formation of
HMF from sucrose (entries 8–10 in Table 1).
NaBr
KBr
NH4Cl
NH4Br
NH4I
NH4Br
NH4Br
NH4Br
NH4Br
a
Reaction conditions: 1.0 g sucrose, 9.5 mol % metal chloride, in 10 mL of DMAc,
reaction time 1 h, temperature 100 °C.
b
The concentration of the promoter was 0.16 M.
The results were obtained by HPLC analysis.
c
and ammonium halides were used as the promoters. The results
are summarized in Table 1. A 66% yield of HMF was obtained with
CrCl3 as the catalyst in N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) (entry 1).
When LiCl, NaCl, and KCl were employed as promoters, HMF yields
of 64%, 67%, and 63% were obtained, respectively (entries 2–4).
These results indicate that alkali metal chlorides do not efficiently
promote the conversion of sucrose to HMF. However, when LiBr,
NaBr, or KBr were employed as the promoter, the yield of HMF
was elevated to 77%, 79%, and 77%, respectively (entries 5–7),
which indicates that alkali metal bromides are more efficient pro-
moters than alkali metal chlorides. A variety of ammonium halides
were also used as promoters for this process (entries 8–10). To our
surprise, the HMF yield was substantially increased (87%—entry 9)
when NH4Br was employed as a promoter. The result for NH4Cl is
To better understand the CrCl3–NH4Br system, the effects of
reaction time on the dehydration of sucrose were investigated
NH4
OH
O
OH
O
H2O
OH
OH
H2O
OH
O
OH
H
O
HO
HO
OH
HO
HO
OH
O
OH
OH
OH
HO
HO
I
NH4
X
X
X
H
H2O
OH
OH
OH
M
X
OH
OH
OH2
OH
OH
O
O
O
O
H
O
H
O
HO
HO
HO
HO
HO
OH
HO
OH
H
OH OH
OH
OH
OH OH
HO
HO
II
III
-H2O
X
X
OH
H
OH
OH
OH
O
O
O
-2H2O
O
O
OH
HO
O
HO
OH
HO
HO
HO
OH
OH
X
HO
HO
HO
HMF
HO
IV
V
Figure 1. Proposed mechanism for the conversion of sucrose to HMF catalyzed by metal chlorides in the presence of an ammonium halide. (M represents various metal;
XÀ represents a halide ion).

184
C. Wang et al. / Carbohydrate Research 347 (2012) 182–185
Table 2
Dehydration of sucrose using different solventsa
Entry
Solvent
Yieldb (%)
1
2
3
4
5
6
Water
Ethanol
4
13
64
56
60
87
N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)
Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO)
Dimethylformamide (DMF)
Dimethylacetamide (DMAc)
a
Reaction conditions: 1.0 g sucrose, 9.5 mol % CrCl3, 0.157 g NH4Br, in 10 mL of
solvent, reaction time 1 h, temperature 100 °C.
b
The results were obtained by HPLC analysis.
Table 3
Dehydration of glucose and fructose with different catalyst systemsa
Entry
Substrate
Catalyst
Promoterb
Yieldc (%)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Glucose
Glucose
Glucose
Glucose
Glucose
Glucose
Glucose
Fructose
Fructose
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
CrCl3
SnCl4
SnCl4
no
No
59
58
74
57
30
52
8
NH4Cl
NH4Br
NH4I
Figure 2. Effect of reaction time on the dehydration of sucrose. (Reaction
conditions: 1.0 g sucrose, 9.5 mol % CrCl3, 0.157 g NH4Br, in 10 mL of DMAc,
temperature 100 °C).
No
NH4Br
NH4Br
NH4Br
NH4Br
SnCl4
CrCl3
73
92
a
Reaction conditions: 1.0 g glucose/fructose, 9.5 mol % metal chloride, in 10 mL
of DMAc, reaction time 1 h, temperature 100 °C.
b
The concentration of the promoter was 0.16 M.
The results were obtained by HPLC analysis.
c
for ethanol or water. It can be concluded that aprotic solvents
are more suitable for the CrCl3–NH4Br system, and dimethylacet-
amide is the most effective.
Furthermore, the reuse of DMAc solvent and CrCl3 has been
achieved in the conversion of sucrose. The experimental results
showed that the yield of HMF is still high after being recycled four
times, which is helpful to decrease the harm of CrCl3 to the
environment.
Intrigued by the results for sucrose, the effect of ammonium
halides on the dehydration of glucose and fructose was then inves-
tigated and the results are summarized in Table 3. For the dehydra-
tion of glucose, an HMF yield of 59% was obtained with CrCl3 as the
catalyst (entry 1). Then, a series of ammonium halides were tested
as promoters for this process. Addition of NH4Cl or NH4I to the
CrCl3 reaction mixture did not enhance the HMF yield, but using
NH4Br did increase the HMF yield to 74% in DMAc (entries 2–4).
These results are in agreement with the halide effect reported by
Binder and Raines.29 That is, the conversion of glucose to HMF is
a two-step process: glucose is first isomerized to fructose followed
by conversion of the fructose into HMF. Bromide, which offers the
optimal balance between coordination ability and nucleophilicity,
is more effective as an ionic additive than chloride or iodide. More-
over, NH4Br also can contribute to the SnCl4 catalyzed conversion
of glucose. In combination with SnCl4, NH4Br greatly increased
the yield of HMF up to 52% (entries 5 and 6). A control test was also
performed with only NH4Br and an HMF yield of only 8% was
obtained, indicating that NH4Br has to be combined with a metal
chloride to promote the glucose conversion (entry 7). In the
dehydration of fructose, the promotion effect of NH4Br is more
significant. For example, SnCl4–NH4Br and CrCl3–NH4Br systems
produced high HMF yields from fructose, 73% and 92%, respectively
(entries 8 and 9). Based on the above results, it can be concluded
that both the glucose and fructose moieties of sucrose can be effi-
ciently converted into HMF with metal chloride/NH4Br systems.
Figure 3. Effect of temperature on the dehydration of sucrose. (Reaction condi-
tions: 1.0 g sucrose, 9.5 mol % CrCl3, 0.157 g NH4Br, in 10 mL of DMAc, reaction time
1 h).
and the results are shown in Figure 2. The yield of HMF increased
when the reaction time increased from 0.5 to 1 h. However, when
the reaction time was extended to 1.5 h or longer, the yield of HMF
decreased, which indicates that after 1 h, the conversion of HMF to
byproducts, such as humins and levulinic acid, is probably more
rapid than the generation of HMF. Thus, the optimal reaction time
is 1.0 h for this catalyst system.
The effect of temperature on the dehydration of sucrose was
also investigated with CrCl3–NH4Br system and the results are
shown in Figure 3. From these results, it can be concluded that
for the catalytic dehydration of sucrose, the optimal reaction tem-
perature is 100 °C.
Different solvents, including protic and aprotic ones, were used
for the dehydration of sucrose for 1 h at 100 °C (Table 2). Yields of
64%, 56%, 60%, and 87% were obtained with N-methyl-2-pyrroli-
done, dimethylsulfoxide, dimethylformamide, and dimethylacet-
amide, respectively. These yields were greatly superior to those

C. Wang et al. / Carbohydrate Research 347 (2012) 182–185
185
1. Experimental
Supplementary data
1.1. Reagents and instruments
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.carres.2011.11.013.
Glucose, fructose, sucrose, CrCl3Á6H2O, SnCl4Á5H2O, SnCl2Á2H2O,
FeCl3Á6H2O, NH4Cl, NH4Br, NH4I, LiCl, LiBr, NaCl, NaBr, KCl, KBr and
DMAc were of analytical grade. A standard sample of HMF was
obtained from J&K Co. Ltd. NMR spectra were recorded on a Varian
Inova 400 MHz spectrometer. The quantitative analyses of the
products were performed on a Waters 1525 HPLC equipped with
both UV and refractive index detectors.
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We acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos. 20834002 and 21003093).