Promotion of levoglucosan production from biomass pyrolysis by hydrogen peroxide pre-oxidation.

Due to the complexity of biomass structures, the conversion of raw biomass into value-added chemicals is challenging and often requires efficient pretreatment of the biomass. In this paper, a simple and green pre-oxidation method, which was conducted under the conditions of 2 wt% H ₂ O ₂ , 80 min, and 150 °C, was reported to significantly increase the production of levoglucosan (LG) from biomass pyrolysis. The result showed that the LG yield significantly increased from 2.3 wt% (without pre-oxidation) to 23.1 wt% when pine wood was employed as a sample for pyrolysis at 400 °C, resulting from the removal of hemicellulose fraction and the in-situ acid catalysis of lignin carboxyl groups formed during the pre-oxidation. When the conditions for pre-oxidation became harsher than the above, the LG yield reduced because the decomposition of cellulose fraction in biomass. The study supplies an effective method for utilization of biomass as chemicals.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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