Straightforward synthesis of calcium levulinate from biomass-derived levulinic acid and calcium carbonate in egg-shells

Abstract

Calcium levulinate (CL) is a nutritional supplement for calcium and a chemical intermediate in synthesizing levulinic biofuels. The reported synthesis of CL involve reaction between cellulose-derived levulinic acid (LA) and calcium hydroxide in an aqueous medium. In this work, we report the production of CL using CaCO<inf>3</inf> from poultry egg shells. The scalable production uses biomass-derived LA and egg-shell derived CaCO<inf>3</inf> under conventional heating and mechanical stirring. The reaction was optimized on temperature, duration of reaction, and equivalent of CaCO<inf>3</inf>. Using 1.5 equivalent of CaCO<inf>3</inf>, the reaction completed within 2h at 50°C and afforded up to 97% isolated yield of CL as a crystalline solid. The reaction was also successfully carried out under mechanical grinding and scaled up to 20 g. The purity of the product was confirmed by melting point, FTIR, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectroscopy. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advanced Materials, Energy & Environmental Sustainability, ICAMEES2018