(265b) Bio-Oil Upgrading through Hydrodeoxygenation

The development of alternative energy, especially from biorenewable resources, such as biomass, has attracted more research interest because of depletion of fossil oil resources, global climate change and national security concerns. Compared to the other alternative energy choices, the production of energy and chemicals from biomass is more attractive due to the vast potential availability of biomass materials and the availability of existing technologies that potentially enable the production of energy and chemicals in commercial scales in shorter time period for near future. Researchers at Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies (CSET) have been working on developing thermo-catalytic techniques to produce biofuels and other value added chemicals by upgrading bio-oil through hydrodeoxygenation reactions. In the present work, heterogeneous catalysts including traditional Co/Mo (Ni/Mo) HDO catalysts, noble metal catalyst that are supported on either metal oxide or carbon materials have been synthesized, characterized and tested for their performances using high-pressure reactor systems. Whole bio-oil and fractionated bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis reactor systems at CSET are upgraded using these catalysts under typical HDO reaction conditions. Model compounds such as guaiacol or D-glucose are used to reduce the complexity of HDO reactions to obtain more insight into reaction mechanisms. The technical goal is to establish a comprehensive upgrading strategy for whole (and/or fractionated) bio-oil through a bottom up methodology.

68.20.52 on 5-3-2010-->