Towards industrial furfural conversion: selectivity and stability of palladium and platinum catalysts under continuous flow regime

Abstract

Furfural is an important biorefinery platform chemical, derived from hemicelluloses which represent an import fraction of lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks and waste streams originating from them. Recently, promising results have been reported on the hydrogenation of furfural, although the selectivity still may be improved. Most of these studies dealt with batch hydrogenation, however, hydrogenation in continuous flow is preferable for industrial applications. In this work, we compare the conversion, selectivity and stability on-stream in continuous flow regime of lab-synthesized and commercial palladium and platinum catalysts