Dehydration of fructose into 5-hydroxymethylfurfural by high stable ordered mesoporous zirconium phosphate

• A series of M-ZrPO have been prepared via evaporation induced self-assembly strategy.
• Superior fructose conversions and 5-HMF selectivity were achieved with M-ZrPO-0.75.
• The M-ZrPO showed excellent structure stability and higher catalytic stability.

In this paper, a series of ordered mesoporous zirconium oxophosphate with different P/Zr molar ratios (M-ZrPO-x) were prepared via one-pot evaporation induced self-assembly strategy (EISA). The catalytic performance of M-ZrPO-x for the dehydration reaction of fructose to produce 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) was also studied. With high concentration of Brönsted and Lewis acid sites measured through NH3-TPD and pyridine-IR, M-ZrPO-0.75 performed high catalytic activity (up to 97.4%) and selectivity (79.6%) of 5-HMF under relatively mild conditions. Furthermore, M-ZrPO-0.75 performed excellent catalytic stability. Based on detailed analyses of XRD, SEM, TEM, BET and XRF, the structural, surface and textural properties of M-ZrPO-0.75 after reaction were investigated. Obtained results demonstrated that the mesostructure still retained even after twelve cycles, which may be ascribed to the “ordered” mesoporous properties and high thermal stability. In addition, a lower activation energy was obtained in this M-ZrPO catalytic system using dimethyl sulfoxide as solvent.

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