Kinetic study of levulinic acid production from corn stalk at relatively high temperature using FeCl3 as catalyst: A simplified model evaluated

Metal salts have been proved to be good catalysts for biomass conversion process. In this study, FeCl3 was used as the catalyst for levulinic acid (LA) production process with corn stalk as biomass substrate under relatively high temperatures. The highest LA yield was obtained at 48.73% under the condition of 230 degrees C and 10 min with 0.5 mol/L FeCl3 solution. A two-step consecutive homogeneous pseudo-first-order irreversible reaction model was developed to predict the yield of LA, which provided a satisfactory interpretation of the experimental results. And the kinetic model brought a deep understanding of the whole hydrolysis process. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.