Furfural Evaluation of pre-treatments in three varieties of biomass

Abstract

The importance of the use of biomass today, provides positive change, due to the decrease in impact of flora, soil and living beings, this affects the biological chain, therefore, this work aims to carry out a comparative an evaluation at the pilot level of pretreatments of three varieties of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of furfural; these resources are sugarcane bagasse, rice shell and corn cob. The results revealed that the furfural obtained corresponds to a concentration of 1.75 g/L of the three resources in amounts of 200, 206 and 222 milliliters respectively, acid hydrolysis was treated with acid concentrations at 6%, 8% and 10%, resulting in an adequate acid concentration of 8%, in HPLC analysis the highest concentration of furfural obtained was 2.75 g/L corresponding to the rice shell and with yield of 42.96%. It was obtained the relationship between the composition of hydrolyzed (three varieties of biomass) and the yields of the furfural, of an optimization process design with con raw material entered of 2021.3 g in a its stabilization time for the 16th minute reaching a maximum production of furfural equivalent to 3 liters, using as physical and chemical pretreatments such as alkaline hydrolysis, acidic and LHW (liquid hot water).

Keywords: Biomass, acid hydrolysis, cane bagasse, rice shell, corn cob, pretreatment, furfural.