Biobased Chemicals from d-Galactose: An Efficient Route to 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural Using a Water/MIBK System in Combination with an HCl/AlCl Catalyst.

5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is an attractive building block for biobased chemicals. Typically, ketoses like d-fructose (FRC) are suitable starting materials and give good yields of HMF in a simple aqueous phase process with a Bro̷nsted acid catalyst. With aldoses, such as d-glucose (GLU), much lower yields were reported in the literature. Here, we report an experimental and modeling study on the use of d-galactose (GAL) for HMF synthesis, using a liquid-liquid system (water/MIBK) in combination with an HCl/AlCl catalyst. Experiments were conducted in a batch system with temperatures between 112 and 153 °C, HCl and AlCl concentrations ranging from 0.02 to 0.04 M, and initial GAL concentrations between 0.1 and 1.0 M. The highest HMF yield was 49 mol % obtained for a batch time of 90 min at 135 °C. This value is much higher than in experiments with GAL in a monophasic aqueous system with HCl as the catalyst (2 mol % HMF yield) under similar reaction conditions. Based on detailed product analyses, a reaction scheme is proposed in which the isomerization of GAL to tagatose (TAG), catalyzed by the Lewis acid AlCl is the first and key step. TAG is then converted to HMF by Bro̷nsted acid HCl. The experimental data were modeled using a statistical approach as well as a kinetic approach. The kinetic model demonstrates a good agreement between the experimental and modeled data. Our findings reveal that temperature is the reaction variable with the most significant influence on the HMF yield. The use of a biphasic system appears to be a promising method for HMF production from GAL.