Abstract
Levulinic acid (LA) is a promising platform chemical that can be produced from C6-sugars of lignocellulose. However, direct conversion of lignocellulose leads to the predefined by-products furfural and a solid residue, composed of lignin and humins. Enabling independent conversion of the major biomass components would increase the flexibility in terms of the products of a biorefinery. Therefore, this work focuses on integrating LA production into a biorefinery, which fractionates the biomass with a thermal-enzymatic treatment using hot water and enzymes only. Besides a glucose solution, used for LA production, a hemicellulose rich hydrolysate and solvent free lignin were recovered. The yields for the C6-fractions after thermal and enzymatic treatment were 95.8mol% and 62.1mol%, respectively.The influence of temperature (160–200°C), residence time (3–90min) and acid concentration (0.25–1M) on LA synthesis, following thermal-enzymatic treatment was investigated by statistical methods, achieving a maximum LA yield of 67.7mol%.
Published Version
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