Biofuels Purification

Production of liquid biofuels and high value–added chemicals from biomass is one of the most important challenges today, due to environmental concerns and the risk of energy shortages. Recently, several research groups have reported a number of approaches to convert six–carbon sugars (such as glucose and fructose) from biomass into a furan compound called 5–hydroxymethylfurfural or HMF. HMF has been identified as the key compound intermediate for the synthesis of liquid biofuels (2,5–dimethylfuran and 2–methylfuran), polymers, pharmaceutical products, etc., constituting a building block in the development of technologies for establishing successful biorefineries. However, there are several technical and economic challenges that have delayed its production on an industrial scale. Some of the difficulties are associated with unknown thermodynamic properties and unknown equilibrium–phase compositions during the reaction process, problems in the HMF separation from the aqueous phase due to the presence of byproducts in the extractive phase and additional difficulties related to the reuse of the solvent utilized.