Abstract

The selectivity of 5-formyl-2-furancarboxylic acid (FFCA) was studied in a batch bioreactor and microbioreactors with different internal diameters (ID). Using microbioreactors, the effect of the flow rate of the liquid and gas phase on the yield, space time yield (STYFFCA), and gas–liquid mixture velocity (UM) of the reaction was evaluated. The biooxidation in flow microbioreactors, a selectivity of 100 % for FFCA was achieved, while with the batch bioreactor at the same substrate concentration a selectivity of 6.7 % was obtained. The highest yield (30 %) with 15 mM of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) was reached at a gas–liquid flow rate of 0.5 µL/min and the highest STYFFCA (0.07 mol m−3 min−1) was achieved at a gas–liquid flow rate of 1.5 µL/min with the microbioreactor with an ID of 0.5 mm. The UM values (0.5 to 1.6 cm min1) indicated that the reaction takes place under a kinetic regime without mass transfer limitations.