Sustainable production of organic acids from chitin biomass catalyzed by Keggin-type heteropolyacid under hydrothermal condition.

The "shell biorefinery," which valorizes the shell waste chitin into fine chemicals, has developed rapidly in recent years. Herein, we present a novel base-free heteropolyacid-catalyzed oxidation method for the transformation of chitin biomass into organic acid. After a series of optimization experiments, a 5.93 % yield of formic acid and 25.09 % yield of acetic acid were achieved in the presence of 0.5 equivalent of Mo-V-P heteropolyacids (H ₄ PMo ₁₁ VO ₄₀ ·2H ₂ O) and air at 180 °C under hydrothermal conditions for 4 h. Meanwhile, we have demonstrated that the Keggin-type heteropolyacid catalysts are capable of efficiently converting microcrystalline chitin into organic acids. The synthesized heteropolyacids are well characterized with FT-IR, XRD, ICP-AES, and TGA. The possible reaction pathway was speculated accordingly. This method offers several advantages, including readily available raw materials, simple operation, and relatively higher yield.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Hongjun Zang reports financial support was provided by Tianjin science and technology commission (No. 18JCYBJC87200). Hongjun Zang reports a relationship with Tianjin science and technology commission that includes: funding grants. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)