Conversion of renewable lignocellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals addresses the grand challenge of achieving sustainable energy and products for the 21st century [1,2]. Utilization of cellulose and hemicellulose within woody and fibrous biomass relies on catalytic conversion of biopolymers to sugars to furans and eventually aromatic species including fuels such as gasoline and chemicals including p-xylene, toluene and ethylbenzene [3,4]. Within the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, we have been addressing the experimental challenges of designing novel catalysts for biomass conversion that achieve long-term stability and produce high activity for highly oxygenated compounds [5]. In this presentation, an overview will be presented of the major advances in experimental catalysis for the selective transformation of sugars to furans and other intermediates/products. [1] This work was funded through the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0001004. [2] P.J. Dauenhauer, G.W. Huber, “Biomass at the Shale Gas Crossroads,” Green Chemistry 2014, 16, 382-383. [3] C. Chang, S.K. Green, C.L. Williams, P.J. Dauenhauer, W. Fan, “Ultra-Selective Cycloaddition of Dimethylfuran for Renewable p-Xylene with H-BEA,” Green Chemistry 2014, 16, 585. [4] S. Vaitheeswaran, S.K. Green, P.Dauenhauer, S.M. Auerbach, “On the way to biofuels from furan: Discriminating Diels-Alder and Ring-Opening Mechanisms,” ACS Catalysis 2013, 3(9), 2012-2019. [5] C. Chang, A.R. Teixeira, C. Li, P.J. Dauenhauer, W. Fan, “Enhanced Molecular Transport in Hierarchical Silicalite-1,” Langmuir 2013, 29(45), 13943-13950.

Experimental catalysis for the conversion of sugars and furans to renewable monomers and fuels

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.

Experimental catalysis for the conversion of sugars and </b>furans to renewable monomers and fuels