Strategies to Control Electrochemical Hydrogenation and Hydrogenolysis of Furfural and Minimize Undesired Side Reactions

Abstract

As the availability of biomass-derived feedstocks increases, the infrastructure necessary to upgrade biomass-derived platform chemicals to value-added compounds from distributed point sources needs to be developed. Furfural, a C5-biomass-derived platform chemical, can be converted to a variety of desirable products. By using electrochemical hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis (ECH), furfural can be converted to furfuryl alcohol and 2-methyl furan at ambient conditions using renewable intermittent electricity without needing hydrogen gas supplied to the reactor. It is desired for the ECH of furfural to have high reaction rates (i.e. high currents), high faradaic efficiencies and control of the selectivity between furfuryl alcohol and 2-methyl furan, all while minimizing the undesired side reactions of hydrogen evolution and humins formation. Achieving this balance is challenging. In this viewpoints article the impact of reaction conditions including electrolyte, pH, current density, potential, and reaction du...