Novel reaction-hybrid-extraction-distillation process for furfuryl alcohol production from raw bio-furfural

Abstract

Research in the fields of biofuels and biochemicals production from lignocellulosic biomass has increased significantly in recent years. Furfuryl alcohol (FFA), which is the most important derivative of furfural, is of great industrial interest owing to its use in foundry technology. The only method to produce FFA is from hemicellulose-rich agricultural wastes. Thus it is considered a key green chemical in C5-based biorefinery. However, the conventional process is energy-intensive and has a low degree of integration owing to the lack of improvement. In this study, a comprehensive reaction-distillation (RD) process producing FFA from raw bio-furfural is proposed. Subsequently, a novel hybrid extraction-distillation process is suggested for improving the developed RD process. Heat integration is considered for both conventional and hybrid processes. All processes were simulated using Aspen Plus V.9. The total annual cost (TAC) and total carbon dioxide emissions (TCE) were evaluated for a fair comparison between these developed processes. The results indicate that the proposed integrated hybrid process can achieve substantial improvement as compared to the conventional process. In particular, this proposed configuration can reduce the TAC and TCE by up to 88.5% and 92.2%, respectively, compared to the RD process.