The development and widespread use of biofuels as supplements for traditional fossil-fuel derived fuels is an important and growing contributor to the global economy and environment. Recently, we reported the use of a tandem iridium and nickel catalyst system for highly selective ethanol upgrading to <i>n</i>-butanol[1]. Our ongoing work in this area has been directed toward the development of first-row metal catalysts for this process. As such, this presentation will discuss the use of iron, cobalt, and nickel dehydrogenation catalysts for their use in the Guerbet process. Initial catalytic studies indicated iron and cobalt catalysts demonstrated poor selectivity and conversion for ethanol to butanol conversion. Improvements on these systems have been obtained using a modular high-throughput approach addressing a range of variables including: catalyst precursor, ligand, base, solvent and additives.<br/>

Ethanol upgrading to butanol and higher alcohols: A high-throughput approach using the Guerbet reaction

254th National Meeting (2017)

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