Furfural production by acid hydrolysis and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction from rice husk

Abstract

The aim of this research was to study the effect of furfural production from rice husk by hydrolysis accompanying supercritical CO₂ (SC-CO₂) extraction. The two-level fractional factorial design method was used to investigate the production process carried out with respect to furfural yield. The process variables are temperature range of 373–453 K, pressure 9.1–18.2 MPa, CO₂ flow rate 8.3 × 10⁻⁵–1.7 × 10⁻⁴ kg/s (5–10 g/min), sulfuric acid concentration 1 to 7 (%wt) and ratio of liquid to solid (L/S) 5 : 1 to 15 : 1 (vol/wt). The results obtained from the experimental design showed that increasing temperature, pressure, CO₂ flow rate and sulfuric acid concentration but decreasing ratio of liquid to solid would improve furfural yield. Moreover, furfural production by two-stage process (pre-hydrolysis and dehydration) can improve furfural yield further to be around 90% of theoretical maximum.