Thermodynamic analysis, experimental and kinetic modeling of levulinic acid esterification with ethanol at supercritical conditions

Kinetic and Nonideal VLE Modeling for Transesterification Reactions from FFA and Methyl Acetate at High Temperature and Pressure Considering Volatilization Effects/Influence

“…For batch esterification/transesterification experiments that do not vary the initial ratio of reaction volume/headspace, model 6 type approaches will present a good fit, as has been extensively studied and modeled for several combinations of free fatty acids and alcohols or esters in the literature, − ,,, or as demonstrated by the good RMSE X value obtained in model 6.1 (Table ). Thus, the prediction error for model 6 type approaches will only be evident if it is used in an extrapolation of its experimental variable range that will influence the compound volatilization, for example, if its estimated parameters were used for a scale-up process or experiments with a different initial ratio of reaction volume/headspace.…”

Supercritical Fluids: A Promising Technique for Biomass Pretreatment and Fractionation

“…As an example, these authors obtained a 95% conversion in LA by hydrogenation, with selectivity of the same magnitude for GVL when titanium oxide containing 1% platinum was used as catalyst in the presence of 40 bar of H 2 and 200 • C. Sequential reactions to obtain VA, EL, and MTHF were evaluated, products were obtained in high yields and properties of different process streams supported their use in several industrial applications. In another study, supercritical ethanol was applied for the autocatalytic conversion of levulinic acid to EL (Kothe et al, 2020). The best conversion of 80% was obtained using an ethanol-to-levulinic acid molar ratio of 9:1 at 280 • C and 100 bar for 15 min.…”

Role of solvent in enhancing the production of butyl levulinate from fructose

“…Alkyl levulinates are promising and versatile platform molecules issued from cellulose and/or hemicellulose alcoholysis with broad industrial applications. Esters of levulinic acid can simply be produced by esterification of levulinic acid [20][21][22][23], but the low yield in the production of levulinic acid, together with the high costs of separation and purification, make this route less beneficial compared to using more affordable starting feedstocks as biomass-derived monosaccharides: glucose and fructose [4,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Although glucose is the most abundant monomers and the least expensive substrate over other monomers [32], fructose shows higher molecular instability and faster reactivity to be dehydrated to 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural, first intermediate in the pathway to alkyl levulinate, whereas glucose must first be isomerized to fructose [33].…”