Hydrogen solubility in bio-based furfural and furfuryl alcohol at elevated temperatures and pressures relevant for hydrodeoxygenation

Abstract

Biomass conversion into fuels and added-value chemicals, in high yield and with good selectivity, is still a great issue and an attractive research topic. The design and the optimization of defunctionalisation processes require accurate kinetic models that take into account the solubility of various gases in the bio-based chemicals present in the process.Some of the promising platform bio-based compounds that can be further converted to valuable chemicals are furfural and furfuryl alcohol. Hydrogen solubility in furfural and furfuryl alcohol was studied at three temperatures from the range (323.15–423.15) K and at pressures up to 25 MPa. Hydrogen dissolves better in furfural than in furfuryl alcohol, for about 15 %.The obtained experimental data were modelled using the Soave-Redlich-Kwong and Peng-Robinson cubic equations of state, as well as the PC-SAFT equation of state. The parameters of the PC-SAFT equation of state for pure compounds were defined for furfural and furfuryl alcohol. The binary interaction parameters, crucial for the prediction of phase-equilibrium behaviour, were determined for both examined systems. The interaction parameters obtained for the cubic equations of state were temperature dependent, while the interaction parameters optimized for the PC-SAFT equation of state were almost the same at all three temperatures for each studied system. The average absolute percentage deviations between the measured equilibrium pressures and those calculated using the mentioned models were under 4 %.