Efficient Production of Furanic Diether in a Continuous Fixed Bed Reactor

Graphical In the reaction zone : Benefiting from the presence of the secondary porosity and the appropriately acidity, the hierarchically structured ZSM-5 (HSZ) catalysts exhibited the excellent catalytic performance for the conversion of 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)furan (BHMF) to 2,5-bis(ethoxymethyl)furan (BEMF) in a continuous fixed bed reactor. The highest yield of BEMF (90.46 %) was obtained over the HSZ-150 catalyst under the reaction condition of 140 °C, 2.0 MPa of H 2 , and 0.3 h −1 of WHSV. The selective conversion of 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)furan (BHMF) to 2,5-bis(ethoxymethyl)furan (BEMF) was investigated in a fixed bed reactor over several heterogeneous solid acid catalysts, including Amberlyst-15, ZSM-5, Mordenite, and a series of hierarchically structured ZSM-5 zeolites (HSZ). The HSZ catalysts exhibited superior catalytic performance to other three commercial catalysts. The highest yield of BEMF (90.46 %) was obtained over the HSZ-150 catalyst under the reaction condition of 140 °C, 2.0 MPa of H 2 , and 0.3 h −1 of WHSV. Moreover, the HSZ-150 catalyst displayed an extremely good stability in the etherification reaction, maintaining more than 80 % yield of BEMF for about 80 h. The outstanding catalytic performance of the HSZ-150 catalyst could be ascribed to that the presence of mesopores enhanced the etherification activity by alleviating the diffusion limitation, and the appropriate acidity improved the BEMF selectivity via suppressing the side reactions.