Aspects related to the production of xylitol

Abstract

The history of xylitol was fairly eventless until its potentialities in medicine and dentistry emerged. Production procedures were developed and improved and up to the 1970’s the patent literature had already been enriched by several applications [33]. The production of xylitol has been based mainly on hydrogenation of D-xylose obtained from prehydrolysis of various xylancontaining plant materials (birchwood, cottonseed hulls, coconut shells, etc.). Other xylan-containing sources are straw, pecan and almond shells, corn stalks, beechwood, etc. In general, raw material for xylitol production is abundant. Thus, production of xylitol from waste materials might help to solve some pollution problems. At present the bulk of pure xylitol available is made in Finland from birchwood chips [33]. A key step in the process is the separation of polyol mixtures by ion exchange chromatography [33].