EXTRACTION AND CHARACETRIZATION OF FURFURAL FROM WASTE OMANI DATE SEEDS

Abstract

Purpose: Furfural (C5H4O2), is an economic and business product in European countries such as America and Australia. Previous years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of palm trees in the Arabian region. The percentage of furfural present in dates seed is around 30%. This paper outline the extraction of furfural from waste Omani date seeds.Methodology: Date seeds were washed, sun dried, heated at 1000C, ground, powdered, and mixed with solvent n-hexane for one day. Then filtered and the filtrate was subjected to simple distillation at 600C in round bottom flask. Furfural was recovered in round-bottom flask and solvent was recovered in another beaker. This hexane was reused for furfural extraction from other batches. Findings: Extracted product was characterized by Carbon NMR and Proton NMR. The Carbon NMR result the experiments were carried out in Bruker Avance III HD 700 MHz spectrometer equipped with 5mm TCI H/C/N cryoprobe. The proton NMR experiment was run using zg30 pulse program operating at 700.13 MHz. The occurrence of C-NMR peaks at 127, 131, 173 ppm confirms the presence of carbon atoms in furfural ring. And the presence of H-NMR peaks between 4 to 8 ppm confirms the presence of furfural protons. Social Implications: Furfural substance is used in some of the important chemical industries such as nylon, plastic, ratings that protect the metals from corrosion, solvents, adhesive, medicines, and plastics and is used in the industry of insecticides, fungicides, anti-microbe, and antiseptics. Therefore, it is widely used in the petrol refinery laboratories to treat the bad Carbon and different Sulfuric combinations existing in the lube oils and it is used in the operations of refining some types of fuel as well, such as diesel. Originality/Novelty: This study is done on Omani date seeds at Caledonian College of Engineering in Chemical Analysis Lab. Extraction product was characterized in Central Analytical and Applied Research Unit at Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat.