Selective Oxidation of Arabinose on Gold Catalysts: Process Design and Techno-economic Assessment

Abstract

The present work focuses on process design and techno-economic assessment of the oxidation of a pentose sugar present in hemicelluloses, i.e., arabinose, on a supported gold catalyst. The processing plant was designed with Aspen Plus. The arabinose feedstock price has an important impact on the operational performance contributing to almost half of these costs. The feasibility of the overall arabinose oxidation process requires efficient extraction of hemicellulose from the lignocellulosic biomass lowering the feedstock costs.