(578e) Effects of Feedstock Preprocessing on the Wood Derived Organic Acid Yields

Levulinic acid is a platform chemical, and it can be upgraded to a range of chemicals and fuels. Levulinic acid can be derived from lignocellulosic feedstock using the acid hydrolysis and dehydration process. The effective preprocessing of lignocellulosic feedstock is needed prior to its conversion to levulinic acid at commercial scale to address the flowability and downstream processing challenges. However, the studies to understand the effects of lignocellulosic preprocessing on the levulinic acid yields, by-product formation, and char characteristics have been limited to non-existent. In this research, we use a bench scale reactor to study the effects of preprocessed forest biomass using the chemical preconditioning system, steam pretreatment method, and thermal pretreatment method. Further, the effect of increase in the concentration of levulinic acid in the reaction mixture on the kinetics of acid hydrolysis and dehydration and the yields of levulinic acid will be determined. The initial results indicate that the removal of hemicelluloses of pine wood chips using the chemical preconditioning system increase the levulinic acid yields in comparison to the yields of levulinic acid produced from untreated whole pine wood chips. Further, the results show that chemical preconditioning of wet pine wood chips at 170 °C and a residence time of 30 minutes led to high yields of levulinic acid. Finally, the organic acid yield results indicate low initial moisture contents of feedstock gave lower yields but that air drying to 25% moisture content had no significant impact and that a changing particle size between 1 mm to ~18 mm does not have significant impact on the organic acid yields.