The 6th International Conference on Biomass Energy (ICBE2018)

303 / 2018-07-30 16:05:07

Study on Furfural Reduction to Furfuryl Alcohol Technology by Microbial whole cell catalysis

Plenary track > B. Biomass Polygeneration

Recently, high value utilization of biomass-based product furfural (FAL) has attracted researchers’ attention. Furfuryl alcohol (FOL) is the hydrogenation product of the formyl group in FAL and is widely used in the fine chemicals and polymer industry. Bio-catalytic reduction of FAL to FOL has a number of advantages such as mild reaction conditions, environmental friendliness, and high selectivity. In this work, a highly FAL-tolerant yeast strain - Saccharomyces cerevisiae NL22 was screened, and biocatalytic reduction of FAL to FOL using its whole cells was reported. Co-substrates exerted a significant effect on the reduction of FAL, and it indicates that glucose was the best choice for this reaction. In addition, 60 mM FAL could be selectivity reduced to FOL within 8 h at 30 °C by its whole cells in the presence of 15 g/L glucose (as co-substrate), 15OD cell dosage , with a high conversion of FAL (100%) and the selectivity of FOL (87.9%). The production of 120 mM of FOL was realized within 24 h by using a fed-batch strategy, with the conversion of 96.2% and the selectivity of 86.0%. These results indicate that Saccharomyces cerevisiae NL22 enable to reduce FAL to FOL with high selectivity, and this biocatalytic reduction reaction is an effective and feasible method for the reduction of FAL to FOL.