Furfural:

Furfural is the base chemical of today’s furan chemistry. It can be produced from virtually any agricultural waste material by acid catalysed digestion of hemicelluloses. This process can be considered as one of the oldest forms of chemical biorefinery.  About 70% of the world production of FF is converted to furfuryl alcohol. Furfural is also used as an extractant, solvent and chemical feedstock for other furan chemicals.

 

Furfuryl alcohol:

Furfuryl alcohol is the main derivative of furfural produced by a catalytic hydrogenation. This bio-alcohol finds a large application base in the formulation of foundry and refractory thermoset resins.

 

FA plays a vital role in the production of furan foundry sand binders which are extensively used to produce high quality sand cores and molds for metal casting.  Furan foundry binder is a generic term for binders containing FA. The flexibility of FA as a binder base is enormous. Today FA is especially used in the formulation of furan-no-bake binders as well as gas and temperature hardened binders (Hotbox, Warm box, …)

 

 Next to the traditional applications in the foundry and refractory industry, furfuryl alcohol is used for the production of  user friendly polyols, solvents and BioRezTM, FuroliteTM, and FurosetTM thermoset resin systems.