Process Design of Hybrid Extraction and Distillation Processes through a Systematic Solvent Selection for Furfural Production

Abstract

Abstract Lignocellulosic biomass is one of the most potential alternatives for replacing mineral resources to overcome global warming, the major current environmental issue in recent years. Furfural was listed as one of the top 30 potential chemicals from biomass by NREL; however, the current production of furfural is energy–intensive and uses inefficient technology. Thus, a hybrid purification process combining extraction and distillation for furfural production from lignocellulosic biomass was studied in details to improve process efficiency. The effective hybrid process depends on the choice of the extracting solvent. The promising solvents were proposed through a comprehensive procedure of solvent selection from solvent screening to complete process design. Various solvents were first evaluated in terms of extraction ability and selectivity, then promising solvents were selected to study of separation feasibility. Eventually, the processes using three best solvents such as toluene, benzene, and n-butyl chloride were designed and optimized in detail using Aspen Plus. These processes were compared in terms of the energy requirement, total annual cost, and CO2 emission. The results show that benzene and n-butyl chloride were the most suitable solvents for hybrid furfural process as their process can achieve total annual cost savings of 71.3 and 44.7% while reducing the CO2 emission of 72.2% and 45.5%, respectively compared to the toluene process.