Furfural Production by 'Acidic Steam Stripping' of Lignocellulose

Furfural and acetic acid are produced with approximately 60 and 90mol% yield, respectively, upon stripping bagasse with a gaseous stream of HCl/steam and condensing the effluent to water/furfural/acetic acid. The reaction kinetics is 1(st)order in furfural and 0.5(th)order in HCl. A process concept with full recycling of the reaction effluents is proposed to reduce the energy demand to <10ton(steam)ton(furfural)(-1) and facilitate the product recovery through a simple liquid/liquid separation of the condensate into a water-rich and a furfural-rich phase.