Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemical Engineering Journal journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cej Alumina-coated mesoporous silica SBA-15 as a solid catalyst for catalytic conversion of fructose into liquid biofuel candidate ethyl levulinate Zahra Babaei, Alireza Najafi Chermahini ⁎ , Mohammad Dinari Department of Chemistry, Isfahan University of Technology, 84154-83111 Isfahan, Iran HIGHLIGHTS • Alumina/SBA-15 catalysts were syn- thesized and characterized by various methods. • These catalysts were used in the pro- duction of ethyl levulinate from fruc- tose. • The optimum conditions were in- vestigated by the experimental design method. • The selected catalyst was reused 4 times without any significant change in the product yield. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Alumina/SBA-15 Ethyl levulinate Fuel additives 5-Ethoxymethyl furfural 2-(Diethoxymethyl)-5-(ethoxymethyl) furan ABSTRACT Ethyl levulinate (EL) will be biomass-derived compound, which could be transformed into a variety of valuable compounds. In this work, a series of alumina-coated silica SBA-15 catalysts were prepared via wet-impregnation method and were applied in the conversion of fructose into EL. These catalysts were characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy; low and wide-angle XRD, N 2 adsorption–desorption, ICP-OES, TEM, SEM, EDX and elemental mapping techniques. Among the catalysts, Al-5-SB catalyst with Al content of 2.2% showed the best results for EL production with the selectivity and yield 86% and 58%, respectively. The various parameters such as the temperature of the reaction, time of the reaction, catalyst amount and the initial amount of fructose were investigated. Moreover, an experimental design was used to find optimized reaction conditions so that 190 °C for the reaction temperature, 4 h for the reaction time, and 50 mg of the catalyst for EL production was selected. As well as, the reusability of the catalyst was studied and it was reused for four runs without significant change in its catalytic activity. 1. Introduction With increasing global concern over the reduction of fossil energy resources and environmental pollution caused by these resources, in recent years, finding an alternative source has attracted a lot of interest. Since biomass is a renewable source, it can be applied as an alternative source for them. Carbohydrates as important raw materials in the in- dustry are produced from biomass, a source that is available and abundant [1]. Carbohydrates derived from biomass are converted to the valuable products [2–4] such as alkyl levulinates as the fuel additives, under an acid catalytic process [5–11]. Generally, a fuel additive can be considered as a compound that is combined with fuel in order to pre- vent incomplete combustion and corrosion, reduce oxides of nitrogen (NO x ) and smoke emission and reduction of sulfur content [12]. Alkyl levulinates are chemical compounds having an intense potential ap- plication in different fields such as biofuel and chemical synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2018.07.004 Received 18 December 2017; Received in revised form 26 June 2018; Accepted 1 July 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: anajafi@cc.iut.ac.ir, najafy@gmail.com (A. Najafi Chermahini). Chemical Engineering Journal 352 (2018) 45–52 Available online 02 July 2018 1385-8947/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T