CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 52, 2016 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Petar Sabev Varbanov, Peng-Yen Liew, Jun-Yow Yong, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, Hon Loong Lam Copyright © 2016, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., ISBN 978-88-95608-42-6; ISSN 2283-9216 Selective Hydrogenation of Levulinic Acid to Gamma- Valerolactone Using Polymer-Based Ru-Containing Catalysts Igor I. Protsenko, Linda Zh. Nikoshvili*, Valentina G. Matveeva, Esther M. Sulman, Evgeny Rebrov Tver Technical University, A.Nikitina str. 22, 170026, Tver, Russia nlinda@science.tver.ru This work is devoted to the investigation of the possibility of use of ruthenium-containing catalysts on the basis of polymeric matrix of hypercrosslinked polystyrene (HPS) in hydrogenation of levulinic acid to gamma- valerolactone, which is a semi-product for obtaining of liquid fuel components. Catalyst 5 %-Ru/MN100 was shown to allow carrying out the hydrogenation of levulinic acid in aqueous medium with high yields of gamma- valerolactone (higher than 99 %) and it can compete with traditional catalyst 5 %-Ru/C. It is noteworthy that synthesized HPS-based catalyst has high activity, and thus the necessity of addition in reaction mixture of acidic co-catalysts is absent. 1. Introduction At present the process of biofuel production on the basis of levulinic acid (LA) causes high interest of many scientists engaged in these developments. LA is one of the substances, which can be obtained from cellulosic biomass via acid hydrolysis (Sivasubramaniam and Amin, 2015). LA can serve as a precursor in the synthesis of gamma-valerolactone (GVL) (Carvalheiro et al., 2008). Furthermore, LA can be transformed to 2- methyltetrahydrofurane (2-MTHF), which is a fuel additive. It is noteworthy that 2-MTHF is permissible to mix up to 70 % with gasoline without causing harm to the internal combustion engines, and thus similar mileage is reached. Although there is a possibility of direct LA transformation to 2-MTHF, improved yields can be achieved by indirect pathways, which proceed through the production of GVL as an intermediate (Huber and Corma, 2007). Thus GVL is one of the most widespread lactones, which can be obtained by hydrogenation of LA (De Souza et al., 2014) (see Figure 1). Figure 1: Scheme of LA transformation to GVL and 2-MTHF DOI: 10.3303/CET1652114 Please cite this article as: Protsenko I. I., Nikoshvili L. Zh., Matveeva V. G., Sulman E. M., Rebrov E., 2016, Selective hydrogenation of levulinic acid to gamma-valerolactone using polymer-based ru-containing catalysts, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 52, 679-684 DOI:10.3303/CET1652114 679