The 6th International Conference on Biomass Energy (ICBE2018)

504 / 2018-09-12 17:05:44

Exploring bulky chemicals from furfural platform through catalytic oxidation and carbonylation

Plenary track > G.Platform Technology

Utilization of renewable biomass to partly replace the fossil feedstock as the carbon source for chemical industry has attracted much attention due to the limited fossil resources with its rapid depletion. Currently, furfural is on-going industrially produced from C5 based carbohydrates which represent a large amount of biomass resources, and not competitive with the food of human beings. However, due to the limited market volume of the sub-products from furfural, the industrial production of furfural is very limited (less than 0.25 M ton/y); thus, exploring new, bulky chemicals from renewable furfural is extremely attractive. Here, we present our recent works in catalytic oxidation of furfural to maleic acid/anhydride, and catalytic carbonylation of furoic acid to 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid, both of which have huge market in polymer industry.