Honors College Thesis
 

Two Step Oleofuran Production from Furfural and Fatty Alcohols

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/honors_college_theses/b2774297c

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  • A present abundance of biomass and a decreasing supply of petroleum signal the need for efficient pathways from renewable feedstocks to high value chemicals. One such class of chemicals is oleofurans, molecules comprised of a furan ring and carbon chain which can be used to make powerful hard water surfactants. In an effort to make oleofurans amenable to large scale production, a new method is presented to synthesize an oleofuran in two steps from furfural and hexadecanol, two readily available renewable reagents. In the first step, heterogeneous hydrotalcite facilitates the coupling of furfural and hexadecanol to form a furan aldehyde adduct. This coupling step was also studied using a homogeneous Ni catalyst with potassium carbonate, and it was performed with three primary alcohols (C4, C8, and C16) for both the homogeneous and heterogeneous chemistry. To produce the oleofuran, the C21 adduct of furfural and hexadecanol undergoes hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) over heterogeneous Ru catalysts to give oleofuran products at 30% yield from the starting reagents. Future work aims to improve the yield of the HDO step and develop a lab-scale continuous flow process. Key Words: oleofuran, fatty alcohols, furfural, hydrodeoxygenation
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  • Funded in part by the DeLoach Work Scholarship and Honors Experiential Award at Oregon State University.
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  • 2020-06-01 to 2022-07-02

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