Furfural production from xylose and birch hydrolysate liquor in a biphasic system and techno-economic analysis

Abstract

Furfural has been highlighted as one of the top ten most rewarding bio-based building blocks by the US Department of Energy. In this study, furfural was produced from xylose and birch hydrolysate liquor employing a batch reactor in a biphasic system. The formation of furfural was conducted under auto-catalyzed conditions. 2-sec-Butylphenol was used as extractant to promptly extract furfural from the aqueous phase in order to minimize furfural degradation reactions. The effect of time, temperature, and organic-to-aqueous phase ratio were investigated. The maximum furfural yields from xylose and birch hydrolysate liquor as feedstock under auto-catalyzed conditions when employing 2-sec-butylphenol (SBP) were 59 mol% and 54 mol%, respectively. In the monophasic system when using hydrolysate, 46% furfural was yielded. Based on a techno-economic analysis carried out for furfural, the total investment cost for a plant integrated with an existing pulp mill or bio-refinery is estimated as 14 M€. The minimum selling price of furfural found to be 1.62 € kg−1. With a furfural selling price of 1.93 € kg−1, the payback period is approximately 5 years and an internal rate of return (IRR) of 20.7% is achieved at the end of the project lifetime.

Continuous hydrothermal furfural production from xylose in a microreactor with dual-acid catalysts

“…42,43 The energy performance of our purification process in terms of energy consumption per mass of furfural produced (kW kg furfural −1 ) was 50.2 kW kg furfural −1 . This was similar to the work of Millán et al , (2021) 44 (49.3 kW kg furfural −1 ) who applied the combination of solvent extraction and distillation to obtain the furfural purity of 97.8%.…”

Recovery of pentoses-containing olive stones for their conversion into furfural in the presence of solid acid catalysts

“…However, the furfural production considerably enhanced when the reaction was carried out at 150 ºC from this liquor, being the optimal temperature for this process carried out in two steps, since the catalytic performance was worse at 175 ºC, probably due to the undesired reactions were promoted at higher reaction temperature, as previously reported (Gómez-Millán et al, 2020). In the case of L7.1, these undesired reactions took place even at low reaction temperatures, since the deactivation was observed even at 125 ºC, which could be due to the presence of higher amounts of formic and acetic acids.…”

Techno‐Economic assessment for superactive carbon production from side stream lignin

“…The discount rate, plant lifetime and tax rate were assumed to be 20%, 10 years and 20%, respectively (Table 1). 44,45 …”