The market demand for renewable fuels and chemicals has surged in the past decades. However, today the cost of fuels or chemicals from biomass is still high to compete with petroleum-derived counterparts. One of the grand challenges in the production of renewable fuels and chemicals is the low carbon atom efficiency to the desired products. Herein we have developed a novel “one-pot” biphasic tandem catalytic process (biTCP) that was used to convert plant biocrudes to hydrocarbons at an extraordinarily high carbon efficiency. Unlike the conventional monophasic catalytic processes, the biTCP is a new approach of tandem catalysis in water / organic biphasic solvent media with spatially separated different catalysts, which catalyze distinct reactions in water and organic solvents, respectively. For demonstration, the mono- and diterpenoids, e.g., the biocrudes of <i>Eucalyptus</i> and <i>Grindelia Squarrosa</i>, have been converted into cycloalkanes, which are high-density jet fuel components, with the hybrid catalysts in aqueous and cyclohexane solvents, respectively, in the biTCP. The similar process was also able to efficiently convert lipids and sugars to renewable fuels and chemicals, respectively. The reaction mechanism was investigated to gain a fundamental understanding of the effects of thecatalyst properties, as well as the process conditions, on the conversion of the different types of biomass feedstock.

Biphasic catalytic process for production of renewable fuels and chemicals

256th National Meeting (2018)

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