Effect of Alcohols on Simultaneous Bio-oil Upgrading and Separation of High Value-added Chemicals

This paper studied the effect of alcohols on simultaneous esterification and alkylation reactions designed for the upgrading of bio-oil, and the separation of upgraded oil. The upgrading of bio-oil was performed in an autoclave with Amberlyst-36 as the catalyst, and methanol, ethanol, and n-butanol as the alcoholic solvents. The separation of various chemical components, such as unreacted solvents, water phase, extraction phase, and high value-added chemicals, in the upgraded oil were realized via distillation, at 80-90 degrees C (at 0.01MPa) vacuum distillation and an extraction process. The results showed that, the simultaneous esterification and alkylation reactions for the upgrading of bio-oil not only restrained the acetylation reaction of aldehydes, which increased the relative contents of stable ethers, but also enhanced the oil soluble components of the upgraded bio-oil. After separation, the high value-added chemical, namely methyl--d-glucopyranoside, was obtained with 5.39wt.% yield and a relative content of 88.9% (sugar phase). The results from this work also showed that this novel method was quite a promising technique for upgrading bio-oil together with the separation of the high value-added chemical. [GRAPHICS] .