The Study on the Effect of Acid Concentration, Temperature, and Time on the Dehydration of Xylose to Furfural in Ethanol Solvent

Abstract

The development of the palm oil industry is followed by the increased amount of lignocellulosic biomass waste. Lignocellulosic biomass waste contains cellulose and hemicellulose which are potential sources of C6 and C5 sugars. C5 or pentose can be hydrolyzed into furfural through the hydrolysis process and then dehydration reaction using the acid catalyst in various kinds of solvent. At this moment, the highest yield of furfural in the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of xylose in water resulted in only about 50.0w-%. Other methods such as salt addition or the use of various organic solvents lead to new challenges both in purification and environmental issues. Therefore in this study, 70.0w-% ethanol in water was utilized as the solvent in a range of temperatures (140-170°C) and concentration of sulfuric acid (0.1-0.5M) up to 120 minutes reaction time. As the outcomes, the shorter time was needed to achieve maximum furfural yield with the increase of temperature and acid concentration with the water and the ethanol as the solvent. Improvement was shown in the highest furfural yield achieved up to 70.0-72.0mol-% (after 15 min at 170°C, 0.2-0.5 M concentration of H2SO4). The results showed the potential use of ethanol as a green solvent to produce furfural from xylose.