Polymerization of sugars/furan model compounds and bio-oil during the acid-catalyzed conversion – A review

Acid catalysis is one of the most important chemical processes for the conversion of biomass or biomass derivatives to value-added chemicals and biofuels. Polymerization is one of the bottleneck issues during the acid-catalyzed conversion, which consumes feedstock, diminishes the production of target products and results the deactivation of catalyst. In this review, we focus mainly on the previous work on the use of alcohols (compared with water) as the reaction media for suppressing the polymerization reactions during the acid-catalyzed conversion of C6 sugars, C5 sugars, furans, phenolics and bio-oil. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the reaction networks involving sugars/furans during the acid-catalyzed conversion in water and alcohol media.