The market demand for renewable fuels and chemicals has surged in the past decades. However, one of the challenges of biomass conversion is that, unlike the petroleum counterpart, biomass feedstocks are very diverse but there is lack of cost-effective platform technology that could convert a vast variety of biomass to desired products at a high carbon atom efficiency. Herein we have developed a “one-pot” liquid-liquid biphasic catalytic process that was used to convert relatively hydrophilic biomass feedstocks to more hydrophobic products at high carbon efficiencies. Unlike the conventional monophasic catalytic processes, in a biphasic catalytic process, water / organic biphasic solvent media are used to spatially separate different catalysts, which catalyze distinct reactions in different solvents, respectively. For demonstration, a variety of different biomass molecules including carbohydrates, lignin derived phenols, terpenoids, fatty acids and vegetable oils were converted to furans, benzenes, cycloalkanes, straight-chain alkanes, respectively, in the similar biphasic catalytic processes. We observed substantial improvements of the reaction kinetics as well as the selectivities to the corresponding products. The reaction mechanism was investigated and the understanding of the underlying physiochemical fundamentals, such as the effects of the catalyst properties, solvents, as well as the process conditions, on the conversion of the different types of biomass feedstock, were gained. We thus concluded that the biphasic catalytic process is a promising generic platform technology for biomass conversion.<br/>

Biphasic catalytic process: Generic platform technology for biomass conversion

2019 Fall National Meeting

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