Construction of strong Lewis acidity through pre-calcining octahedral Zr-MOF to exhibit high activity for the selective isomerization of α-epoxypinane

•The Zr-MOF-R material is firstly synthesized by the rotating hydrothermal crystallization with regular octahedral structure and large specific surface area.•After low-temperature calcination, the zr-mof-r-x-cal does retain basically an intact structure of Zr-MOF-R precursor and the surface lewis acidity and lewis acid ratio are significantly enhanced.•Zr-MOF-R-300-Cal presents the best catalytic effect with 95.9% conversion of α-epoxypinane and 82.4% selectivity of CA, much superior to those catalytic materials reported previously in the literature.•The catalytic activity of the zr-mof-r-300-cal material is not decreased a lot after repeated-use six times, indicative of its excellent stability.