Synergistic effect of chloro and sulphonic acid groups on the hydrolysis of microcrystalline cellulose under benign conditions.

The hydrolysis of cellulose catalysed by ionic liquid (IL) immobilized on chloromethyl vinyl benzene (CMVB) with different IL/CMVB ratio was carried out in water as a solvent. The influence of process variables like IL/CMVB ratio in catalyst, temperature and time were investigated in a batch reactor. It was found that 40% IL/CMVB catalyst afforded maximum%TRS and glucose yield 58.5 and 47.9% respectively at 160 °C in 6h reaction time. This can be attributed to the synergistic effect of chloro and sulfonic groups, to dissolve the cellulose by breaking the intra and inter molecular hydrogen bonds and cleave the β-1, 4 glycosidic bonds respectively. The catalysts synthesized in the laboratory were characterized by FTIR, CHNS and TGA. The catalyst can be recovered three times without any significant loss in activity and characterized by FTIR to show the peaks of chloro and sulfonic groups in the recovered catalyst.