E.i. Dupont De Nemours and Company

Eric J Till

Paul Joseph Fagan

Ronnie Ozer

David Richard Corbin

Bhuma Rajagopalan

Keith Ward Hutchenson

Sourav Kumar Sengupta

Carmo Joseph Pereira

Stuart Fergusson

Pranit S Metkar

Furfural is produced by mixing an aqueous feedstock solution containing Csugar and/or Csugar with a heated, high boiling, water-miscible solvent, such as sulfolane, and a soluble acid catalyst. Furfural product and water are distilled off through a multistage distillation column, leaving non-volatile solvent behind. Typical furfural yields with sulfolane as the reaction solvent are about 80% at as high as 99% conversion. Also, certain by-products (e.g., humins) solubilized in the reaction solvent can be precipitated by addition of water or aqueous feedstock solution and then removed by filtration, thereby providing a convenient and effective way of removing these undesirable byproducts from the reaction mixture.

Process for the production of furfural

Furfural is produced by mixing an aqueous feedstock solution containing Csugar and/or Csugar with a heated high boiling, water-miscible solvent, such as sulfolane, and a solid acid catalyst. Furfural product and water can be distilled off, leaving non-volatile solvent behind. Furfural yields of over 70% at as high as 99% conversion have been obtained with this process with sulfolane as the reaction solvent and zeolite beta as the solid acid catalyst. Also, certain by-products (e.g., humins) solubilized in the reaction solvent can be precipitated by addition of water or aqueous feedstock solution and then removed by filtration, thereby providing a convenient and effective way of removing these undesirable byproducts from the reaction mixture.

Furfural is produced by contacting a feedstock solution containing Csugar and/or Csugar with a solid acid catalyst using reactive distillation. Both high yield and high conversion are obtained, without production of insoluble char in the reaction vessel. Degradation of furfural is minimized by its low residence time in contact with the solid acid catalyst. Higher catalyst lifetime can be achieved because the catalyst is continually washed with the refluxing aqueous solution and not sitting in high-boiling byproducts like humins, which are known to be deleterious to catalyst lifetime.

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Eric J Till