One-pot synthesis of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural from glucose and corn stover in an aqueous choline chloride/ acetone ternary solvent

Aqueous choline chloride/acetone was developed as a green ternary solvent for catalytic conversion of glucose and raw corn stover into 5-HMF. The results illustrated that acidic ChCl solution played a vital role in promoting the tandem isomerization/dehydration reaction of glucose to 5-HMF, while acetone was identified as an efficient extracting solvent to simultaneously remove 5-HMF from the aqueous phase. The composition of the ternary solvent system was found to have a significant impact on the 5-HMF yield, reaction selectivity, and preventing the further degradation of 5-HMF. A competitive 5-HMF yield of 73.3 mol% was achieved from glucose catalyzed by an ultra-low H 2 SO 4 loading of 2 mmol at 190 °C for 10 min in the ternary ChCl-H 2 O-acetone solvent with a mass ratio of 1:2:3. This novel solvent system exhibited good stability, high efficiency, and excellent recyclability, employing in catalytic conversion of both glucose and lignocellulose to produce 5-HMF.