Glucose to 5‑Hydroxymethylfurfural: Origin of Site-Selectivity Resolved by Machine Learning Based Reaction Sampling

Glucose pyrolysis, a model system in biomass utilization, is renowned for its great complexity, deep in reaction network hierarchy and rich in reaction patterns. The selectivity in glucose pyrolysis, e.g., the high yield of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a value-added platform product, remains an intriguing puzzle even after 60 years of experimental study. Here we resolve the whole reaction network of glucose pyrolysis using a global-to-global technique for reaction pathway sampling. This is achieved by establishing the first organic chemistry reaction database via stochastic surface walking (SSW) global optimization, building the global neural network (G-NN) potential via machine learning and extensively exploring the reaction network of glucose pyrolysis. In total, 6407 elementary reactions, screened out from more than 150 000 reaction pairs in glucose pyrolysis, are collected in our reaction database. The established reaction network from SSW-NN, further validated by first-principles calculations, reveals that for glucose to HMF, the lowest energy reaction pathway involves fructose and 3-deoxyglucos-2-ene (3-DGE) as key intermediates and a site-selective reaction type, retro-Michael-addition, for three consecutive dehydration steps. The overall barrier is determined to be 1.91 eV, being at least 0.19 eV lower than all previously proposed mechanisms, which assumes direct β-H elimination dehydration. The lowest pathways to the other two major products, furfural (FF) and hydroxyacetaldehyde (HAA), are also discovered with a similar barrier 1.95 eV, which exhibit a competing nature by sharing the same key intermediate, 3-ketohexose. Since chemical reactions occurring in fast glucose pyrolysis are generally present in biomass chemistry, containing essentially all reaction patterns of C–H–O elements, the methodology designed and the results presented would help to advance reaction design and mechanistic modeling in renewable fuels from biomass.