Process synthesis and simulation of furfural production from rice straw biowaste

Rice straw is regarded as one of the main cereal straws that are produced every year in substantial amounts. Typically, rice straw is burned by farmers as they could not find a more promising technique to dispose it. This burning produces particulates and carbon monoxide causing many adverse effects on the environment and the public health, and finding a way to efficiently utilise this biowaste resource is of great importance. This research investigates the process synthesis of the acid-hydrolysis of rice straw to produce furfural, a versatile platform molecule for biofuels and biochemicals. The kinetic model and operating conditions used for simulation are obtained from previous studies. Results of reactor simulations are validated with the experimental work. Optimisation will follow to manipulate several parameters including acid concentration, reaction temperature, acid/rice straw ratio, catalyst concentration and type of acid to increase the furfural yield and reaction conversion. The second phase of this research will consider a full flowsheet simulation and sensitivity study to reach an optimum process with respect to environment and economics. Aspen Plus^® simulation package is employed for process simulation, sizing and analysis.