Alternative Sugar Sources for Biobased Chemicals

Abstract

In future biobased economies concept which involves the production of heat, power, transportation fuels and chemicals stems from renewable resources like biomass. has been proposed as an alternative to the current fossil based economy in the last decades. One of the important part of a biobased economy is the Bbiorefineries will be used to y concept where the separate the biomass is separated into fractions that are subsequently converted using dedicated (catalytic) processesbiological, (bio)-chemical, physical and/or thermal processing. Beside sustainable energy and fuels, these biorefineries will also producetion of biobased platform chemicals is also of high interest within the biorefinery concept. Biobased chemicals with a high derivatization potential such as due to the presence of multiple functional groups are often addressed as building block or platform chemicals. A wide variety of platform chemicals can be obtained from sugars and among them, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). is of our particular interest due to its high versatility. The commercial scale production of HMF is still in a stage of infancy, due to high cost of production, associated with high feedstock prices, low yields, and difficulties with product separation. Identification of alternative, cost-efficient feeds for HMF synthesis is one of high relevance interest to improve the techno-economic viability for overall HMF production process. An Preferred feeds ideal substrates should be inexpensive, relatively abundantly available and require minimum or even no pre-treatment. In this thesis, experimental studies on the use of two alternative sugar sources namely “pyrolytic sugars” and “thick juice” for the synthesis of platform chemicals via chemo-catalytic routes with an emphasis on HMF are described. Experimental and kinetic modeling studies were performed and the effects of process conditions and catalysts on HMF yield were investigated in detail. In some cases, the studies were performed on model components to reduce complexity.Interesting results were obtained, showing the potential of both feeds for HMF production.