US 2013/0172584 A1Published application

Process for the production of furfural

AssigneeE. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company

InventorsDavid Richard Corbin, Paul Joseph Fagan, Ronnie Ozer, Bhuma Rajagopalan, Eric J. Till

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Abstract

Furfural is produced by mixing an aqueous feedstock solution containing C5 sugar and/or C6 sugar 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.

Claims15

Dependent claims

A process comprising:

(a) providing a reactor comprising a distillation column disposed on top of a reaction vessel, wherein the reaction vessel contains a solid acid catalyst in a water-miscible organic solvent;
(b) bringing an aqueous feedstock solution into contact with the solid acid catalyst and the water miscible organic solvent in the reaction vessel for a residence time sufficient to produce a mixture of water and furfural, wherein the aqueous feedstock solution comprises C5 sugar, C6 sugar or a mixture thereof, and wherein the contents of the reaction vessel are at a temperature in the range of 100-250° C. and a pressure in the range of 0.0001-0.21 MPa;
(c) removing the mixture of water and furfural from the top of the distillation column;
and
(d) adding water or the aqueous feedstock solution to at least a portion of the contents of the reaction vessel comprising organic solvent, water, unreacted sugars and nonvolatile byproducts to precipitate water-insoluble byproducts and removing the precipitated water-insoluble byproducts.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.