Separation and Purification of Furans from n-Butanol by Zeolitic Imidazole Frameworks: Multicomponent Adsorption Behavior and Simulated Moving Bed Process Design

Abstract

Biomass-derived furanic chemicals such as 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) are significant biorefining targets with potential as biofuels and aromatic feedstocks, and processes for their large-scale production are hence of interest. The development of efficient and low-cost processes for DMF purification from dilute multicomponent reactor exit streams is a key challenge. Here we develop an adsorption-based separation process that utilizes zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) as the active material, which directly upgrades dilute (<10 wt %) furanic streams to a high-purity product. We combine multicomponent adsorption measurements with the detailed design of a simulated moving-bed (SMB) process for high-purity furanics (primarily DMF) production and concurrent generation of a purified solvent (n-butanol, BuOH) recycle stream. Upon the basis of the hypothesis that hydropobic ZIF materials may allow enhanced furanic adsorption selectivity over alcohols, we investigate several ZIFs via unary adsorption measurement...