Cellulose reactivity in ethanol at elevate temperature and the kinetics of one-pot preparation of ethyl levulinate from cellulose

Cellulose reactivity in ethanol at elevated temperature (170–210 °C) was investigated in this study. Water and acid catalyst can improve the solubilization and the conversion of cellulose in ethanol. In ethanol/water medium, more humic solids will be formed, but the amounts of diethyl ether decreased greatly. In ethanol medium, the ethanolysis reaction of cellulose played a dominant role, with ethyl levulinate (EL) as the main liquid product. In addition, organic esters and furan derivatives were the main small molecules in the liquid, and diethoxymethane and diethyl sulfate were considered as the main liquid by-products. On the basis, the kinetics of one-pot preparation of EL from cellulose was further investigated at a temperature range of 170–210 °C and an acid concentration range of 0.5–2.0 wt%. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was employed to develop an approach for the evaluation of the process. A good agreement of the ANN model results and the experimental data was obtained, and the optimum reaction conditions for one-pot preparation of EL were temperature 188 °C, reaction time 30 min, acid concentration 1.2 wt%. Under the conditions, higher EL yield can be obtained, which was close to the ANN model result.