PRODUCTION OF LEVULINIC ACID FROM SUGARCANE BAGASSE VIA ACID

HYDROLYSIS REACTION

RAW MATERIAL

The Philippines Sugarcane Industry contributes no less than P70 Billion to country’s
economy annually. Out of the total land area of about 30 million hectares, sugarcane is planted to
about 422,500 hectares in the Philippines. There are 29 operating raw mills with combined
crushing capacity of 185,000 metric ton cane per day. In Luzon, Central Azucarera de Tarlac has
a capacity of 7,200 tonnes cane and 8,000 50-kg bags per day respectively.

For each 10 tonnes of sugarcane crushed, a sugar factory produces nearly 3 tonnes of wet
bagasse. Since bagasse is a by-product of the cane sugar industry, the quantity of production in a
country is in line with the quantity of sugarcane produced.

PROCESS
PRE-TREATMENT PROCESS

The bagasse was air dried, then oven dried for 24 hrs. The dried bagasse was ground and
given a pretreatment with dewaxing (extraction) and delignification (filtering) processes. The
extraction process involves a size reduced bagasse and sulphuric acid fed in leaching equipment
followed by delignification reaction by mixing diluted NaOH and acid treated bagasse then
filtration.

HYDROLYSIS PROCESS

Cellulose and hemicellulose were two out of three components obtained form
lignocellulosic material. These components are polymer that can be attacked through hydrolysis.
The hydrolysis product of cellulose is glucose (C6). Meanwhile, the product of hemicellulose is
xylose (C5). Decomposition of C6 with acid as catalyst produced 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde
as an intermediate product. Further rehydration gave LA and formic acid. Decomposition of C5
gave furfural. Clarification was done to separate the remnants of lignocellulose which were not
hydrolyzed.

SEPARATION PROCESS

At the end of the process, multiple distillation was carried out to separate the formic acid,
furfural and LA.