Chitin is one of the most abundant biopolymers on Earth but under-utilized. The effective conversion of chitin biomass to useful chemicals is a promising strategy to make full use of chitin. Among chitin-derived compounds, some furan derivatives, typically 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and 3-acetamido-5-acetylfuran, have shown great potential as platform compounds in future industries. In this review, different catalytic systems for the synthesis of nitrogen-free 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and nitrogen-containing 3-acetamido-5-acetylfuran from chitin or its derivatives are summarized comparatively. Some efficient technologies for enhancing chitin biomass conversion have been introduced. Last but not least, future challenges are discussed to enable the production of valuable compounds from chitin biomass via greener processes.

In this paper, new matrix and corresponding fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts were prepared by reutilizing the exhausted dust which was derived from fluidized catalytic cracking flue gas. The results showed that the new matrix has wider mesopore size distribution than pseudo-boehmite binder. With the increase of the additional amount of this new matrix, FCC catalyst possessed increased micro-activity test conversion of vacuum gas oil (VGO) from 68 % to 71 %. The catalytic cracking performance on a fixed fluidized bed unit showed that compared with CAT-1, the conversion of VGO on CAT-5 increased by 1.19 %, heavy oil yield and coke yield decreased by 2.16 and 1.65 %, respectively. Besides, the total liquid yield and light oil yield increased by 2.27 and 2.26 %, respectively. The reaction performance of CAT-3 and CAT-5 is obviously superior to CAT-1. The appropriate pore structures and crystallized Y zeolite component on this new matrix improve the cracking ability of FCC catalysts.