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US 4,533,743 AGranted
Furfural process
AssigneeAtlantic Richfield Company
InventorsDavid J. Medeiros, Mark B. Burnett
Life of this patent
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AssigneeAtlantic Richfield Company
InventorsDavid J. Medeiros, Mark B. Burnett
Estimating the term…
Furfural yield and selectivity are maximized by reacting a 1 to 10 percent pentose 0.05 to 0.2 normal mineral acid aqueous solution in a plug flow reactor operated at a temperature between 220.degree. C. and 300.degree. C. The reaction residence time is short and is between 0.5 and 100 seconds. This special high severity plug flow reactor operation may be operated in any configuration to recover the furfural product. Two preferred arrangements are a single phase, pentose recycle operation in which the furfural is recovered by solvent extraction and distillation, and a two phase, solvent recycle operation in which solvent is added to the reactor and furfural is recovered from the solvent by distillation. In some embodiments, the solvent has a boiling point higher than the boiling point of furfural and the ratio of solvent to aqueous phase on a weight to weight basis is between 0.25 and 2.
A process for the production of furfural from pentosans comprising feeding an aqueous pentose solution containing 1 to 10 weight percent of pentoses into a plug flow reactor, feeding sufficient mineral acid into said plug flow reactor to make the acid normality of the water fed to the reactor to be between 0.05 and 0.2, operating said reactor in a manner such that the temperature of said reactor is between 220.degree. C. and 300.degree. C. and the residence times of said pentose is between 0.5 and 100 seconds and in a manner such that the concentration of pentose decreases progressively through the reactor and all fluid elements of said aqueous solution passing through said reactor have essentially the same residence times, and flowing an aqueous solution containing furfural from said plug flow reactor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.