Solid acid-induced hydrothermal treatment of bagasse for production of furfural and levulinic acid by a two-step process

Abstract

A two-step process was developed to produce furfural and levulinic acid (LA) using the solid acid-induced hydrothermal treatment of bagasse. In the first step, hydrothermal pretreatment was applied to treat bagasse for producing furfural using Sn-MMT/SO42− solid acids as catalysts in the biphasic system. In the second step, the treated residue was further hydrothermally treated for producing LA by the continuous use of solid acids. The hydrothermal treatment conditions were comparatively investigated, and the results showed that the highest yield of furfural was achieved up to 88.1% (170 °C, 2.4 h) in the first stage, and the yield of LA was 62.1% (180 °C, 3 h) in the second stage. Therefore, the two-step solid acid-induced hydrothermal treatments could make hemicellulose and cellulose of bagasse to be selectively fractionated and efficiently transformed into furfural and LA, respectively.