Concerns about global warming, national security and the diminishing supply of fossil fuels are causing our society to search for new renewable sources of transportation fuels. In this respect, domestically available biomass has been proposed as part of the solution to our dependence on fossil fuels. While biomass has potential to replace a large fraction of imported petroleum based products, the main obstacle to the more widespread utilization of our low-cost biomass resources is the absence of low-cost processing technologies. The objective of our research is to develop highly efficient and low-cost catalytic processes, catalytic materials and reactors for biomass conversion to fuels and chemicals utilizing aqueous-phase processing. Aqueous-phase technology is advantageous for biomass conversion strategies in that high energy efficiencies are obtained, recyclable-heterogeneous catalysts are used, and biomass-derived molecules, which have a high degree of functionality and low thermal stability, can be processed. New catalytic materials and processes are developed in our group by using a combination of high-throughput and fundamental studies. High-throughput studies allow the rapid testing of a large number of catalysts, thereby significantly decreasing catalyst development time. We also seek to understand the fundamental chemistry and reaction pathways occurring under reaction conditions. The relationship between the structure of the catalyst and activity/selectivity is investigated using modern in-situ catalytic characterization techniques. New catalytic synthesis techniques, which allow the design of catalyst at the molecular level with controlled adsorption properties, are used to develop highly active catalysts for aqueous-phase processes. We believe it is vital to our nation's energy, economic and environmental future to continue to develop these low-cost strategies for biomass conversion.
Catalysts
Chemistry and Kinetics of Furan Conversion into Aromatics and Olefins over ZSM-5: A Model Biomass Conversion Reaction (with Yu-Ting Cheng), Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels (2010)
The conversion of furan (a model of cellulosic biomass) over ZSM-5 was studied in a...
Optimizing the Shape Selectivity of Zeolite Catalysts for Biomass Conversion: The Kinetic Diameter (with Jungho Jae, Geoffrey A. Tompsett, Andrew J. Foster, Scott M. Auerbach, and Raul F. Lobo), Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels (2010)
We have studied the influence of catalyst pore size and morphology on the conversion of...
Production of Green Aromatics and Olefins by Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis of Wood (with Torren R. Carlson, Yu-Ting Cheng, Jungho Jae, and Jungmo Cho), Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels (2010)
Catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) is a promising process for the direct conversion of solid biomass...
Physical and Chemical Conversion
The Intrinsic Kinetics and Heats of Reactions for Cellulose Pyrolysis and Char Formation (with Joungmo Cho, Yenhan Lin, and Jeffrey M. Davis), Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels (2010)
The conversion of biomass into biofuel products by pyrolysis has attracted tremendous interests due to...
Biofuels Production and Economics
Green Gasoline from Aqueous Phase Hydrodeoxygenation of Carbohydrate (with Ning Li and Geoffrey A. Tempsett), Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels (2010)
Aqueous-phase hydrodeoxygenation (APHDO) is a promising technology to convert biomass-derived oxygenates into alkanes and oxygenates....
No subject area
Catalytic fast pyrolysis of wood and alcohol mixtures in a fluidized bed reactor (with H. Zhang, T. R. Carlson, and R. Xiao), Green Chemistry (2012)
Catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) of pine wood, alcohols (methanol, 1-propanol, 1-butanol and 2-butanol) and their...
Kinetics and reaction chemistryifor slow pyrolysis of enzymatic hydrolysis lignin and organosolv extracted lignin derived from maplewood (with J. Cho, S. Chu, and P. J. Dauenhaue), Green Chemistry (2012)
The kinetics and reaction chemistry for the pyrolysis of Maplewood lignin were investigated using both...
Production of Renewable Aromatic Compounds by Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis of Lignocellulosic Biomass with Bifunctional Ga/ZSM-5 Catalysts (with Y. Cheng, J. Jae, J. Shi, and W. Fan), Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2012)
Heiße Sache! Mit dem neuen difunktionellen Katalysator Ga/ZSM-5 entstehen aromatische Verbindungen bei der schnellen katalytischen...
Renewable Chemical Commodity Feedstocks from Integrated Catalytic Processing of Pyrolysis Oils (with T. P. Vispute, H. Y. Zhang, A. Sanna, and R. Xiao), Science (2012)
Fast pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass produces a renewable liquid fuel called pyrolysis oil that is...
Identification and thermochemical analysis of high-lignin feedstocks for biofuel and biochemical production (with Venugopal Mendu, Anne E. Harman-Ware, Mark Crocker, Jungho Jae, Jozsef Stork, Samuel Morton, Andrew Placido, and Seth DeBolt), Biotechnology for Biofuels (2011)
Background - Lignin is a highly abundant biopolymer synthesized by plants as a complex component...