Renewable platform chemicals from directional microwave-assisted liquefaction coupling stepwise extraction of waste biomass

Abstract

Directional microwave-assisted liquefaction and stepwise extraction are introduced for producing platform chemicals: aromatics and monosaccharides. When sulfuric acid was used as a catalyst, a 45% monosaccharides yield and a 29% aromatics yield were obtained from bamboo with 0.3 g catalyst per 18 g methanol and 2 g bamboo at 160 °C with 10 min. Approximately 78–86 wt% of the six biomass materials were converted into liquid products. After the stepwise extraction and precipitation process, the yields of monosaccharide derivatives and three phenolic compound fractions were 39–45% and 28–32%, respectively. Monosaccharides from holocellulose collected with a high purity of methyl glycosides were higher than 90%. Aromatic derivatives with different weight-molecular distributions were separated into three fractions with more than 80% phenolics. As their similar chemical properties within each fraction, platform chemicals have great commercial potential for producing high-quality chemicals and biofuels using mild upgrading conditions.

Citation

Feng, Junfeng; Hse, Chungyun; Yang, Zhongzhi; Wang, Kui; Jiang, Jianchun; Xu, Junming. 2017. Renewable platform chemicals from directional microwave-assisted liquefaction coupling stepwise extraction of waste biomass. Bioresource Technology. 244: 496-508. 13 p. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2017.07.182.