Determination of the optimum conditions for the production of furfural from hazelnut shells with using one step and extraction method

The agricultural wastes, are in lignocellulosic structure and their basis components, hemicelluloses can be hydrolised to pentoses, xylose and arabinoze, with heat influence and dilute sulphuric acid as catalyst. Then, xylose can be converted to furfural by dehydration at high temperature. To obtain high efficiency, furfural must be taken in a conventional solvent as onitrotoluen which has a low distribution coefficient, higher boiling point than furfural and a different density from water to be able to seperate from furfural and water easily and prevent the conversion to undesirable by products as resins. In this work, furfural is produced from hazelnut shell in CSTR by one stage (acidic hydrolysis + dehidration and extraction by o-nitrotoluen) system. Temperature, liquid / solid ratio and acid concentration effects on furfural production system are searched and the optimum production conditions for system are determined as; 24,65 mg furfural production in one hour base, at 181,27oC, by using % 5,22 sulphuric acid solution with 1,46 liquid / solid ratio.