Hydrolysis of Corn Stalks for the Production of Furfural Using Solid Acid as Catalyst

The purpose of this study is to reduce the environmental influence of furfural preparation by conventional liquid acid catalysis.Hydrolysis of corn stalks for the production of furfural was carried out using SO2-4-TiO2/clay solid acid as catalyst.The main factors influencing the reaction,such as hydrolysis temperature,reaction time and the amount of solid acid were analyzed.They were optimized by response surface methodology(RSM) in order to set up a quadratic regression model.The optimum experimental conditions were as follows: particle size 0.45mm,solid-liquid ratio 1∶10,hydrolysis temperature 158℃,reaetion time 3.8h,and catalyst amount 6.2%,the yield of furfural was 60.95%.