Highly efficient and selective oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural by molecular oxygen in the presence of Cu-MnO2 catalyst

The selective oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to produce value-added chemicals is a hot topic in the utilization of biomass, in which the development of heterogeneous catalyst and the use of O-2 as terminal oxidant is desired. In this work, a series of metal ion-doped MnO2 materials are successfully prepared using liquid precipitation method, and employed as catalysts for the aerobic oxidation of HMF in the alcoholic solvents. As a result, it is found that 86.0% conversion of HMF and 96.1% selectivity of 2,5-diformylfuran (DFF) was obtained under suitable conditions. Moreover, the Cu-MnO2 catalyst can keep a high activity after being recycled five times. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.