Synthesis of furoic acid from biomass via tandem pretreatment and biocatalysis

•Recombinant E. coli BH was constructed for catalyzing furfural.•Xylan in bamboo shoot shell was converted to furfural by solid acid Sn-adamellite.•Furfural (30 mM) could be effectively converted to furoic acid at 35 °C.•Chemoenzymatic conversion of bamboo shoot shell to furoic acid was developed. Upgradation of bio-based product furfural into important intermediates is of great interest. In this study, tin-based adamellite (Sn-adamellite) was firstly synthesized for converting bamboo shoot shell (BSS) into furfural. The optimum solid acid Sn-adamellite loading, pretreatment temperature and pretreatment time were 3.0 wt%, 170 °C and 30 min, respectively. SEM and FT-IR images and chemical components of untreated and pretreated BSS samples indicated that sequential alkalic soaking and solid acid pretreatment could be effectively used for removing xylan in biomass. Furthermore, recombinant E. coli BH harboring horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase (HLADH) was constructed for the biotransformation of 30 mM furfural into furoic acid with 100% analytical yield at pH 7.5 and 35 °C. Finally, an effective hybrid strategy was successfully developed for converting BSS to furoic acid by tandem catalysis via Sn-adamellite pretreatment combined with recombinant E. coli whole cells harboring HLADH.