The use of heterogeneous catalysts for conversion of sugars and sugar alcohols to value-added chemicals has been widely studied in liquid phases. Low selectivities and high costs associated with catalyst recovery have substantially limited commercialization of these processes. Gas phase packed-bed catalysis has recently been successful in overcoming these obstacles for the hydrogenolysis of glycerol to propylene glycol. In this paper, the evaporation of glucose and sorbitol was investigated to identify potential conditions for gasphase conversions of these sugars. In our studies, vapor pressures of sorbitol were estimated in a wider temperature range of (250 to 350) deg C than work done by Guido et al. (J. Chem. Soc. Faraday Trans. 1990, 86, 75-79) at (177 to 227) deg C. A thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) method was used to estimate a boiling point of 362 deg C for sorbitol with sorbitol s vapor pressure following a Clausius-Clapeyron model behavior. In addition, evaporation studies demonstrated sobitol evaporation and condensation on a practical level. The evaporation of sorbitol was experimentally validated with no decomposition at 0.1 bar and 294 deg C and 2.5 % (mass fraction) in water. The evaporation of high-concentration sorbitol feed can be achieved by mixing with a high-temperature gas (e.g., steam). Glucose evaporated with partial decomposition at temperatures as low as 220 deg C.
Compounds
#
Formula
Name
1
C6H14O6
D-sorbitol
2
C3H8O3
glycerol
Datasets
The table above is generated from the ThermoML associated json file (link above).
POMD and RXND refer to PureOrMixture and Reaction Datasets. The compound numbers are included in properties, variables, and phases, if specificied;
the numbers refer to the table of compounds on the left.