Sustainable and efficient production of furoic acid from furfural through amine assisted oxidation with hydrogen peroxide and its implementation for the synthesis of alkyl furoate

Abstract

Aromatic functionality is an important feature for the design of new molecules with specific properties. Today fossil fuel feedstocks provide aryl building blocks with well-known chemistry, which can be implemented in different products for different applications. Furan building blocks are biobased chemicals derived from biomass, which have the potential to be implemented in different end products such as polymers and surfactants, substituting petrochemicals. The success in implementing furan-based compounds is strongly dependent on an efficient chemical pathway, which can give low operating costs and high yields. In this paper, we study the production of furoic acid starting from furfural through a base assisted oxidation with hydrogen peroxide. Specifically, we report a strategy to efficiently produce furoic acid and integrate this with the production of the intermediate alkyl furoate for surfactant production. Further evaluation was done on the recovery and valorisation of the co-products (sodium sulfate and amine oxide) showing that the economics of the process can be further improved. This approach can provide high reaction yield (99%) and an efficient separation of the final product, providing a valuable competitive building block for surfactant synthesis.