Modeling the attainable regions for catalytic oxidation of renewable biomass to specialty chemicals: Waste biomass to carboxylic acids

Abstract

The °catalytic depolymerization of lignocellulosic biomass to specialty chemicals is often hampered by challenges, which mainly includes cost of catalyst as well as degradation of the chemicals as they are produced. In order to enhance catalytic conversion of cocoa pod husk as an industrial alternative for the production of carboxylic acids, this study presents the modeling of process kinetics and the development of a new technique to minimize reactor volume (hence catalyst mass) and maximize yield by using the concept of attainable region optimization. Two metal supported catalysts, Cu/Al2O3 and Ru/Al2O3 were explored at different reactor temperatures, 30 °C,50 °C and 70°C for the production of acetic acid, glycolic acid, oxalic acid and gluconic acid at moderate reaction conditions. The developed kinetic models accurately predicted the acid concentrations with high of R2 values reaching 0.9878, and low values of χ2 and RMSE respectively reaching 0.0000 and 0.0032 for most of the operating conditions. Attainable region analysis revealed that the optimal reactor structure for all the carboxylic acids consist of a CSTR followed by a PFR with a bypass from the feed.This study presents the first of its kind using reactor structures to optimize catalytic conversation of cocoa pod husk into carboxylic acids.