Furfural production should be an integrated unit-process of every lignocellulosic biorefinery (see Paid4Pretreatment ), as it offers the best use of the C5-molecule for the conversion into fuels (example: C10 and C11 branched alkanes, with low freezing points, are synthesized through the aldol condensation of furfural and methyl isobutyl ketone).

1,2-Pentanediol (Eco certified pentylene glycol) is synthesised from furfural via furfuryl alcohol. Biobased 1,2-Penanediol helps the cosmetics industry to offer its consumers products that are made environmental friendly (and in this case: made from corncobs or sugarcane bagasse).

Reduced to one production step: This most probably opens another avenue for competitive production of 1,5-pentanediol (PDO, or pentane-1,5-diol),  which sells at ±US$9,000/t. The conventional pathway to PDO from furfural was via multi-step hydrogenation (via THFA/Methyl-THF).

Pentane-1,5-diol is a valuable intermediate for the chemical industry. It finds applications in a variety of polymeric systems and is also used in the synthesis of specialty chemicals such as thermoplastic polyurethanes and polyester resins. Its most important uses include plasticizers, pharmaceuticals, crop protection agents, cosmetics as well as and inks and coatings. One of the benefits of Pentane-1,5-diol (PDO) is that it was found to be safe and more effective than several other diols with respect to pharmaceutical and cosmetic properties (www.basf.com).

Furfural is a green chemical building block: http://j.mp/GQHGob.

It does not have to be like that!

It seems that there are no obvious off-the-shelf solutions, but there are pathways to turn ‘waste’ into revenue. For close to 15 years, we have been developing technologies to convert agricultural residues into bio-renewable chemicals and energy and have also evaluated selected biomass from the palm oil industry. Our approach is only one step towards the solution, but an important step, as in essence we “condition” the biomass to make further processing easier and in doing so, we make money from extracting a high value chemical, which we are able to trade into global niche markets.

Here’s the link to our proposal: dalinyebo.com/palm-residues