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  1. Nur Aainaa Syahirah Ramli, Nor Aishah Saidina Amin
    Sains Malaysiana, 2015;44:883-891.
    Levulinic acid (LA) is a versatile platform chemical with numerous potential uses. Conversion of oil palm fronds (OPF)
    to LA over Fe/HY zeolite catalyst has been conducted in this study. The optimization process using Box-Behnken design
    gave 19.6% of LA yield at 181.7°C reaction temperature, 7.7 h reaction time, 1.13 g Fe/HY zeolite loading and 0.25 g OPF
    loading. The efficiency of OPF conversion at the optimum conditions was determined to be 61.1%. It was also demonstrated
    that Fe/HY zeolite gave sufficient performance for five successive cycles of OPF conversion to LA. The results suggested
    that Fe/HY zeolite is potential as catalyst for biomass conversion to LA.
  2. Nur Aainaa Syahirah Ramli, Nur Irsalina Hisham, Nor Aishah Saidina Amin
    Sains Malaysiana, 2018;47:1131-1138.
    Levulinic acid (LA) is one of biomass derived building block chemicals with various applications. Catalytic esterification
    of LA with alkyl alcohol produces levulinate ester which can be applied as fragrance, flavouring agents, as well as fuel
    additives. In this study, a series of sulfated silica (SiO2
    ) catalyst was prepared by modification of SiO2
    with sulfuric acid
    (H2
    SO4
    ) at different concentrations; 0.5 M to 5 M H2
    SO4
    . The catalysts were characterized, and tested for esterification
    of LA with ethanol to ethyl levulinate (EL). The effect of various reaction parameters including reaction time, catalyst
    loading and molar ratio of LA to ethanol on esterification of LA to EL were inspected. The catalyst with high concentration
    of acid sites seemed suitable for LA esterification to EL. Among the sulfated SiO2
    catalysts tested (0.5 M-SiO2
    , 1 M-SiO2
    ,
    3 M-SiO2
    and 5 M-SiO2
    ), 3 M-SiO2
    exhibited the highest performance with the optimum EL yield of 54% for reaction
    conducted at reflux temperature for 4 h, 30% 3 M-SiO2
    loading and LA to ethanol molar ratio of 1:20. Besides, the
    reusability of 3 M-SiO2
    catalyst for LA esterification with ethanol was examined for five cycles. Esterification of LA with
    methanol and 1-butanol were also carried out for methyl levulinate (ML) and butyl levulinate (BL) productions with 69%
    and 40% of ML and BL yields, respectively. This study demonstrates the potential of sulfated SiO2
    catalyst for levulinate
    ester production from LA at mild process condition.
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