Setting up a pilot unit for 5-carbon hemicellulosic sugars conversion into furfural by biphasic proc

The current price of petroleum (44.10 USD/barrel-sept 2016) and of natural gas (2.47 USD/GJ-sept 2016) significantly slowed down the development of second generation biorefineries in the last months. Indeed, the availability and the advantageous cost of fossil fuels make it rather difficult the scaling up of new 2nd generation technologies that should lead to biofuels production. Lignocellulosic biomass price (typically 60-80 USD per dry ton of forest and agricultural residues) combined to the low cost of ethanol market (1.46 USD/Gal - sept 2016) requires a full and optimal utilization of the non-cellulosic biomass fractions (hemicellulose, lignin and extractives) to finally generate more income by ton of input material for possible biorefineries. This project concerns more specifically the hemicelluloses that typically count for 15 to 35% of the lignocellulosic biomass. The hemicellulose macromolecule, like cellulose, is composed of carbohydrate. However, in contrast with the cellulosic fiber, hemicelluloses adopt a ramified form in addition to be composed not only by 6-carbon carbohydrates, but also by 5-carbon carbohydrates such as xylose. In a biorefinery concept, hemicellulosic 6-carbon sugars could be co-fermented with sugars from cellulose hydrolysis (mainly glucose) but 5-carbon sugars cannot be fermented by classical yeasts. The use of different micro-organisms can be an option to consider while another approach would be a chemical conversion of 5-carbon sugars with the well-known path of furfural synthesis.

For the last 5 years, Pr. Lavoie and his team developed a technology allowing the high yield conversion of 5-carbon sugars from hemicelluloses to furfural. This approach, named P-fuel and P-Chems process (from pentosane-derived fuels and chemicals) aims ultimately to valorize the 5- carbon sugars to furfural, then, in a second step, to produce 2 methyltetrahydrofuran, an industrial solvent as well as an oxygenated fuel additive. The technology developed by Pr Lavoie’s team requires the use of a biphasic system allowing the furfural isolation in an organic medium as it is produced, avoiding a polymerization of furfural molecules between them or the formation of links between furfural and other sugars molecules (humins). The pilot unit that will be built has a 10 000 L of furfural by year capacity (equivalent to 1.25 L of furfural by hour) and will be assembled in terms of the preliminary works done by the team on batch and plug-flow continuous systems.