The history of Furfural

[janelee]

Furfural was first isolated in 1832 by the German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, who formed a very small quantity of it as a byproduct of formic acid synthesis.At the time, formic acid was formed by the distillation of dead ants, and Döbereiner's ant bodies probably contained some plant matter. In 1840, the Scottish chemist John Stenhouse found that the same chemical could be produced by distilling a wide variety of crop materials, including corn, oats, bran, and sawdust, with aqueous sulfuric acid, and he determined that this chemical had an empirical formula of C5H4O2. In 1901, the German chemist Carl Harries deduced furfural's structure.

 

Except for occasional use in perfume, furfural remained a relatively obscure chemical until 1922, when the Quaker Oats Company began mass-producing it from oat hulls. Today, furfural is still produced from agricultural byproducts like sugarcane bagasse and corn cobs.