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 CaCO3 from poultry egg shells. The scalable production uses biomass-derived LA and egg-shell derived CaCO3 under conventional heating and mechanical stirring. The reaction was optimized on temperature, duration of reaction, and equivalent of CaCO3. Using 1.5 equivalent of CaCO3, 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