The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is seeking commercial partners interested in developing a method for producing 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from C6 carbohydrates using a solvent system containing water and a polar aprotic solvent.
The reaction can be integrated into the conventional route for making high fructose corn syrup. The process is efficient in converting a concentrated fructose stream from an HFCS process to HMF in high yield (>90 percent) at high fructose conversion (>94 percent). HMF produced via this process is easily separated from the solvent system by traditional unit operations.
Current methods to produce HMF from biomass-derived sugars using water as a solvent suffer from the drawback of poor selectivity. Improvement in selectivity is observed when solvent systems composed of water and an organic solvent are used; however, HMF loss during difficult product separation typically limits the application of such methods. Moreover, high HMF purity is critical for downstream applications, especially in production of HMF-derived monomers used in sustainable polymer synthesis (e.g., FDCA required for production of PEF).
UW–Madison researchers have discovered that a solvent system comprising water and a polar aprotic solvent (e.g., acetone) is ideally suited for converting C6 carbohydrates into HMF at reasonably low temperatures (such as 120°C), low acid concentration and at very high yields and efficiencies.
The C6 carbohydrate used in the method can be derived from any source including biomass (processed or unprocessed), cellulose and lignocellulosic sources, etc. The nature of the C6 carbohydrate is not critical to the method, although fructose is preferred.
The resulting HMF can be used as a platform chemical to make other, value-added materials, such as levulinic acid (LA), furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), diformylfuran (DFF), dimethylfuran (DMF), adipic acid (AA) and formic acid (FA). This approach was shown to be practical in a proof-of-concept reaction in which selectivity to HMF was >95 percent and HMF yield > 90 percent.
- Production of HMF from fructose/biomass-derived sugars
- High fructose conversion (>94%)
- High HMF selectivity (>95%)
- High purity HMF (>96% purity)
- Compatible with existing infrastructure in the high fructose corn syrup industry
- Solvents are stable, environmentally benign and easy to separate.