The furfural market has great development potential, but the existing production process needs to be improved.

Furfural, also known as furanformaldehyde, is the only unsaturated large-volume organic chemical obtained from sugar compounds. Furfural has active chemical properties. As an important chemical raw material, furfural can be used to produce more than a thousand chemical products through oxidation, condensation and other reactions. Its downstream applications involve synthetic plastics, rubber, food, medicine, pesticides, energy and other fields.

The raw materials for furfural production include corn cobs, rice husks, camellia oleifera husks, cottonseed husks, dried sugarcane bagasse, etc. In my country, corn cobs are the main raw materials for furfural. From the production process point of view, the mainstream production processes of furfural include QuakerOats process, Petrole-chimie process, Agrifuran process, EscherWyss process, Rosenlew process, etc. Due to the huge energy consumption, serious environmental pollution and low yield of the above production processes, Europe, the United States, Japan Furfural production has been stopped in other areas.

Furfural is a renewable product. The development of furfural industry can not only improve the utilization rate of corn cobs, but also help promote carbon neutrality and carbon peak. As the global energy conversion accelerates, the demand for furfural will continue to grow. However, in order to achieve long-term development of the industry, problems such as high energy consumption, low yield, and environmental pollution in furfural production need to be solved, and the furfural production process still needs to be further improved. , there is an urgent need to develop new green furfural preparation methods.

According to the “2022-2026 Furfural Industry In-depth Market Research and Investment Strategy Suggestions Report released by the Industrial Research Center, global furfural production capacity It is mainly distributed in developing countries such as China and Brazil. Thanks to its wide sources of raw materials and high technological level, my country has become the world’s largest furfural producer and exporter, with furfural production capacity accounting for approximately 70% of the global production capacity. Domestically, furfural production companies include Jinan Shengquan Group, Xinxiang Kawasaki, Yimin Furfural, Guojie Furfural, Zhongfuran Co., Ltd., etc. The companies are mainly distributed in areas with rich corn cob resources such as Shandong, Henan, and Hebei.

my country is a major corn-growing country, and the annual output of corn cobs remains at about 55 million tons. The price of corn cobs in my country is low and the sources are wide, which is beneficial to the development of the furfural industry. my country’s furfural production scale is large, but the scale of production enterprises is generally small. In recent years, as environmental protection supervision has become increasingly strict, backward furfural production capacity has gradually withdrawn from the market, and the furfural industry structure has been optimized. In the context of carbon neutrality, the furfural industry and the new energy industry are accelerating the integration, and various new projects such as furfural residue + biomass cogeneration, clean energy power generation + co-production of furfural have emerged.

Industry analysts said that furfural is an important raw material for a variety of drugs and industrial products and has a wide range of downstream applications, benefiting from market demand. With the increase and sufficient supply of raw materials, my country has become the world’s largest furfural producer and exporter. Furfural is a renewable product. Under the background of carbon neutrality and carbon peak strategies, the furfural industry has huge development potential. However, the existing furfural production process still has problems such as low yield and high energy consumption. There is an urgent need for reform of the furfural production process.