Research on the process of producing furfuryl alcohol by hydrogenation reaction of furfural

Online monitoring quickly provides conversion rate results, shortening the research and development cycle by 3 times compared to offline laboratory monitoring.

Furfuryl alcohol is the main raw material for the production of furan resin, and can also be used as antiseptic resin and pharmaceutical raw materials. Hydrogenation can produce tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol, which is a good solvent for varnishes, pigments and rocket fuel. Furfuryl alcohol can be prepared by hydrogenation of furfural, i.e furfural is hydrogenated and reduced to furfuryl alcohol under catalyst conditions.

During the process research of this reaction, it is necessary to quantitatively detect the raw materials and products, and evaluate the conversion rate to screen the optimal reaction process and evaluate the impact of flow rate, temperature, and pressure on the reaction process. The traditional research method is to take samples and send them to the laboratory after the reaction, and then use chromatographic methods for quantitative analysis. The reaction itself only takes 5-10 minutes to complete, but subsequent sampling and analysis requires at least 20 minutes, which is very time-consuming and required physical efforts.

In process optimization, online spectroscopy technology can observe the changing trends of raw materials and products in real time, and provide the contents of raw materials and products. The peak areas of the characteristic peaks marked in the figure above show the content of raw materials or products. The figure below shows the ratio of product to raw material content analyzed intelligently by the software. The raw material conversion rate is the highest under process 2 conditions. Online monitoring technology helps researchers determine that this condition is the best process condition. Compared with chromatographic laboratory testing methods, online monitoring saves offline sampling and laboratory testing time, shortens the research and development cycle by more than three times, and significantly saves the time and cost of enterprise process research and development.