New catalytic processes for the efficient and environmentally benign creation of sustainable transportation fuels from renewable/non-petroleum resources must have high priority in the 21st-century scientific research agenda. Lignocellulosic biomass is an attractive resource due to low cost and wide availability compared to many other renewable energy resources. However, despite significant investments in advanced biofuels research, progress has been slow5, primarily because we do not yet know how to carry out the needed catalytic conversions with useful efficiencies and selectivities. The Institute for Atom-efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) was a DOE EFRC seeking to change how catalysts are created and implemented, moving from Edisonian empiricism to science-based design and control, as outlined in the BES “Grand Challenges,” “Mesoscale Science,” and “Materials Genome” reports. Traditional catalyst syntheses often lead to random distributions of relatively simple structures and multiple compositions, affording less than optimum catalytic activity and selectivity. IACT has focused on synthetic approaches to new generations of catalysts where a single, complex 3D environment is tailored for atom-efficient chemical transformations. Through analysis of reaction mechanisms as well as active site architecture and electronic structure, modeling and simulation will accelerate the discovery of new catalytic constructs, customized for potentially any chemical transformation. To succeed, a highly interactive, multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers who are leading experts in catalyst materials science, computational chemistry, operando spectroscopy, kinetics, and reaction engineering, worked in a unified collaborative effort to achieve these goals. Through revolutionary concepts in catalyst design IACT has developed materials that outperform conventional catalyst and enable new chemical transformation that can atom-efficiently convert biomass into fuels and chemicals. IACT mapped out, both experimentally and computationally, the kinetics and mechanisms of complex biomass conversion pathways by integrated collaborations between theory and experiment. This seminar will discuss the new materials and mechanisms that IACT discovered in promoting green chemistry in the field of biomass to fuels witha goal of minimizing side reactions and to creating nanometallic sites that are specific to the reaction of interest.

Conversion of cellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals

251st National Meeting (2016)

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