The recent boom in light alkane production has driven a need to find alternative sources of large (&gt;C<sub>4</sub>) carbon-based feedstocks for both liquid fuels and chemicals.  Biomass is particularly attractive in this regard.  In this work, we show that ethyl esters of mixed organic acids obtained by methane-inhibited, open-culture anaerobic fermentation of whole biomass can be coupled in the vapor phase over a Pd/CeZrO<sub>x</sub> catalyst, with the resulting product mixture having the correct carbon-chain-length distribution to be potentially be blended with hydrocarbon jet fuels.  The carbon yield was greater than 90% starting from the fermentation-derived esters.  Based on a combination of experimental reaction kinetics measurements and gas-phase thermodynamics calculations, we postulate a reaction network that explains the production of the most abundant products via a combination of direct ester ketonization, dehydration, and hydrogenation.

Production of jet-fuel range molecules from biomass-derived mixed acids

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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