High and low esterification degree pectins decomposition by hydrolysis and modified Maillard reactions for furfural production

In recent years, there has been a great interest in the conversion of lignocellulosic structures to furfural. There are many technologies available for this process. Nonetheless, the present work reports for the first time the use of pectin, a non-lignocellulosic structure, for furfural production. The pectin was extracted from food industry waste derived from cactuses, orange peels and mangoes peels. The extracted pectins were analyzed by infrared spectroscopy (ATR–FTIR) in order to evaluate the degree of esterification (DE). The high DE influences in the hydrolysis reaction in the following stages: (1) hydration, it allows a fast glycosidic bond cleavage in the polysaccharide. (2) Dehydration, an intermediary step in the furfural production from galacturonic acid. The Maillard reaction herein reported not only is used in a novel way to produce furfural but also it has been modified to be performed in acidic conditions to increase the furfural production rate. From the evaluated reactions, it was found that the highest furfural production was obtained with manila mango pectin (82.6 g/L) with a DE of 51.2%. These findings demonstrate that pectins with DE below 75%, the minimum value to be considered for applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries, could be applied for the generation of furfural, a chemical platform for the production of chemicals and biofuels.