Monday, April 11, 2016 at 12:10 p.m. in CUE 419
George W Huber, Harvey Spangler Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin
The Challenges and Opportunities of Designing Pioneer Catalytic Technologies for Production of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals from Biomass
In the past decade over $1.0 billion in private and public funds has been spent on the development of pioneer technologies for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into liquid transportation fuels and chemicals. Several of these technologies have failed at the commercial level and several of these companies have now gone bankrupt. The failure of these technologies is due to two fundamental reasons: 1. economic estimates underpredicted the costs of these technologies; and 2. pilot and demonstration plants operated well below their designed capacity. In this presentation we will first present a predictive model on how to estimate the economics and operability of pioneer technologies. This analysis should be presented and used by any chemical engineer who is working on pioneer technologies.
I will then discuss different approaches for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals that are being developed both inside the Huber research group. The objective of the Huber research group is to develop pioneer catalytic processes and catalytic materials for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals from biomass, solar energy, and natural gas resources. We use a wide range of modern chemical engineering tools to design and optimize these clean technologies including: heterogeneous catalysis, kinetic modeling, reaction engineering, spectroscopy, analytical chemistry, nanotechnology, catalyst synthesis, conceptual process design, and theoretical chemistry.
Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is a platform technology used to convert liquid biomass feedstocks (including aqueous carbohydrates, pyrolysis oils, and aqueous enzymatic products) into alkanes, alcohols and polyols. In this process the biomass feed reacts with hydrogen to produce water and a deoxygenated product using a bifunctional catalyst that contains both metal and acid sites. The challenge with HDO is to selectively produce targeted products that can be used as fuel blendstocks or chemicals and to decrease the hydrogen consumption. I will discuss how to design improved non-precious metal catalytic materials to selective produce both liquid transportation fuels and higher value commodity chemicals from biomass using catalysts designed by atomic layer deposition (ALD). ALD is an emerging tool that allows to synthesize heterogeneous catalysts at the atomic level. I will discuss examples where the atomic precision has been used to elucidate reaction mechanisms and catalyst structure-property relationships by creating materials with a controlled distribution of size, composition, and active site.
We recently reported a new approach to produce levoglucosenone (LGO) from cellulose in yields up to 51% under mild reaction conditions (170-230 °C; 5-20 mM H2SO4) using polar, aprotic solvents such as tetrahydrofuran (THF). LGO can be used to make a wide variety of chemicals from biomass and has been termed the next HMF. The water content and solvent used in the reaction system control the product distribution. LGO is produced from the dehydration of levoglucosan (LGA). LGA is produced from cellulose depolymerization.
We believe that new catalytic conversion technologies have a tremendous potential for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals. As will be demonstrated in this presentation chemistry, chemical catalysis and chemical engineering are critical 21st century needs to help make renewable energy a practical reality.
