Micro-sized hydrothermal carbon supporting metal oxide nanoparticles as efficient catalyst for mono-dehydration of sugar alcohol

Most known catalytic dehydration of sugar alcohols such as D-sorbitol and D-mannitol can only produce di-dehydrated forms as major product,but monodehydrated products are also useful chemicals.Moreover,both di-and mono-dehydration demand a high temperature(150℃ or higher),which deserves further attentions.To improve the mono-dehydration efficiency,a series of metal-containing hydrothermal carbonaceous materials(HTC)are prepared as catalyst in this work.Characterization reveals that the composition of preparative solution has a key influence on the morphology of HTC.In transformation of D-sorbitol,all HTC catalysts show low conversions in water regardless of temperature,but much better outputs are obtained in ethanol,especially at a higher temperature.When D-mannitol is selected as substrate,moderate to high conversions are obtained in both water and ethanol.On the other hand,high mono-dehydration selectivity is obtained for both sugar alcohols by using all catalysts.The origin of mono-dehydration selectivity and role of carbon component in catalysis are discussed in association with calculations.This study provides an efficient,mild,eco-friendly,and cost-effective system for mono-dehydration of sugar alcohols,which means a lot to development in new detergents or other fine chemicals.