Oxidative Decarboxylation of Levulinic Acid by Cupric Oxides

Abstract

In this paper, cupric oxides was found to effectively oxidize levulinic acid (LA) and lead to the decarboxylation of levulinic acid to 2-butanone. The effects of cupric oxide dosage, reaction time and initial pH value were investigated in batch experiments and a plausible mechanism was proposed. The results showed that LA decarboxylation over cupric oxides at around 300 °C under acidic conditions produced the highest yield of butanone (67.5%). In order to elucidate the catalytic activity of cupric oxides, XRD, AFM, XPS and H2-TPR techniques was applied to examine their molecular surfaces and their effects on the reaction process.

Keywords

• decarboxylation
• levulinic acid (LA)
• 2– butanone
• cupric oxides (CuO)