An experimental study on thermal catalytic decomposition of inulin to 5 hydroxymethylfurfural and levulinic acid and the effect of C6 on furfural during the decomposition process

Abstract

The attractive biobased platform chemicals, 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and Levulinic Acid (LA), are commonly produced by the conversion of monomeric sugars. Nevertheless, a polymeric sugar such as inulin shows promising. This work reports the study on the thermal catalytic decomposition of inulin to HMF and LA. This work also investigated the effect of furfural during the process. The decomposition reactions were conducted in a batch reactor in a temperature (153-187)°C, an inulin loading (0.03- 0.12) g mL-1 and reaction times (18 -74 minutes) using a central composite experimental design. Furthermore, to study the effect of fructose and glucose on furfural, some additional experiments were also performed in the batch system. The decomposition process gained 35 wt% yield of HMF and 13 wt % yield of LA. The HMF and the LA model were statistically formulated and showed a good fit to the experimental data. The fructose particularly plays a role in furfural disappearance during the process.