Furfural Production by ‘Acidic Steam Stripping’ of Lignocellulose

Abstract

Furfural and acetic acid are produced with approximately 60 and 90 mol % yield, respectively, upon stripping bagasse with a gaseous stream of HCl/steam and condensing the effluent to water/furfural/acetic acid. The reaction kinetics is 1(st) order in furfural and 0.5(th) order in HCl. A process concept with full recycling of the reaction effluents is proposed to reduce the energy demand to <10 tonsteam tonfurfural (-1) and facilitate the product recovery through a simple liquid/liquid separation of the condensate into a water-rich and a furfural-rich phase.

Targeted chemical upgrading of lignocellulosic biomass to platform molecules

“…Similar results were obtained using metal chlorides, such as AlCl 3 : yields of up to 84% can be obtained using xylose, but they decrease to 34%, 32% and 15% when using pine wood, grass or corn cobs, respectively. 120 Van Buijtenen et al 123 produced furfural by treating bagasse with a stream of gaseous HCl and steam, which continuously stripped the furfural, obtaining a yield of 60% and a concentration of 5.4 wt% furfural. This method reduces the vapor demands to less than 10 tons of steam per ton of furfural produced, compared to the more than 30 tons required in the commercial process.…”

“…Van Buijtenen et al 123 produced furfural by treating bagasse with a stream of gaseous HCl and steam, which continuously stripped the furfural, obtaining a yield of 60% and a concentration of 5.4 wt% furfural. This method reduces the vapor demands to less than 10 tons of steam per ton of furfural produced, compared to the more than 30 tons required in the commercial process.…”

Catalysis for biorefineries – performance criteria for industrial operation

“…Another interesting case study is the production of furfural by acidic steam stripping of bagassethe lignocellulosic residue of cane sugar production. 15 Here, a gaseous stream of steam containing 1 wt% HCl is passed through a bed of bagasse at 160 °C to dehydrate the contained xylose to furfural and to hydrolyse the acetate groups to release acetic acid. Yields are reported to amount to 60 and 90 mol% of the theoretical yield for furfural and acetic acid, respectively.…”

Kinetic and mechanistic aspects of furfural degradation in biorefineries

“…Reactions between furfural and xylose or intermediates in the dehydration of xylose are considered to be the main causes of low yields. [9] To overcome this problem, a variety of approaches have sought to separate furfural from the reaction medium in situ, for instance, by acidic steam stripping, [10] extraction with inert solvents, [11][12][13] or using ionic liquids. [14] Even if reactions with other species are successfully prevented, furfural may form solid by-products by degradation or self-polymerization reactions.…”