The need for renewable fuels continues to evolve due to a host of technological and societal needs. Although the drivers of environmental concerns and energy security remain key considerations, the electrification of lite-weight transportation has begun to question the need for the proposed volume of ethanol needed in the future. Nonetheless, the need to secure renewable resources of diesel, aviation, and marine fuels remains a compelling scientific driving force. From this perspective, the solvolysis of biomass remains an attractive thermal conversion pathway to these fuels. Over the past several years, our team has been exploring the use of catalytic solvolysis to depolymerize and deoxygenate biomass to a fuel precursor that could be subsequently upgraded to fuels. The use of Lewis and Bronsted acids in an aquoues or organsolv system remains an attractive pathway. Recently, we have shown that Mg(ClO4)2/HClO4 in supercritical ethanol was effective for depolymerization and deoxygenation of biomass components. As to be expected, the product mixture was complex containing phenolics, sugar derivatives, carboxylic acids and other components. Employing advanced NMR, GPC, and GC-MS methodologies provided a unique approach to determining the chemical constituents and highlighting chemical conversion pathways. This presentation will present our recent advances and highlight future challenges to this thermal conversion pathway.

Catalyzing biomass solvolysis: Challenges and opportunities

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.