Several research studies related to biorefining have focused on developing routes for biomass conversion
into biomaterials or platform molecules. In this work, the zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) ZIF-8
and ZIF-67 have been tested as catalysts in the conversion of sugars (sucrose, glucose and fructose) into
methyl lactate. ZIF-8 and ZIF-67 have the same sodalite type zeolite structure but behaved differently in
the sugar conversion in methanol due to the respective presence of Zn and Co in their structures. ZIF-8
has been found to be the most active for the conversion of sugars into methyl lactate (yield 42%) and
was reused in four catalytic cycles. The chemical and physical effects caused by these cycles on the catalysts
have been studied by several techniques (X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analyses, infrared
spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electronic microscopy and nitrogen
adsorption).