Keywords :

Bio-refinery, Biomass, green hydrocarbon, catalyst, zeolites.

Abstract :

Despite enormous benefits to modern civilization, the adopted production and consumption patterns have increased at the expense of huge amounts of non-renewable energy, paradoxically pushing us toward an environmental risk. The production of green hydrocarbons by using the standard refinery structure can remarkably shorten our path to sustainability. Herein we present an approach that combines the idea of protective reaction in ‘traditional’ organic chemistry and comprises the transformation of biomass into a bio-crude by ketalization reaction (1-3), followed by catalytic upgrading (4). Thus producing bio-aromatics (1) and bio saturate hydrocarbons (4) by FCC and hydro process respectively. As a consequence of mostly hydroxyl groups of sugars are protected (by forming ketal groups), the bio-crude is stable. Thus fulfills requisites of up-, middle- and down-stream of the oil industry, i.e., be stored, transported and co-processes with typical gasoil (without having to modify the current set-ups in the refineries). In the second part, it will be presented the use of biomass derivative compounds for producing tailor-made catalysts with remarkably improved properties (5) like mesoporous alumina (6) and ZSM-5 (7).

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2. J. F. Pinto, L. S. M. Miranda, P. M. Marcelo, in Problems, process and industry prospects, K. F. Olson, Ed. (Nova Science Publishers, Nova York, 2017), pp. 314.

3. R. Garrett et al., Unveiling the chemical composition of sugar cane biocrudes by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Energy & Fuels 29, 8082-8087 (2015).

4. N. Batalha et al., Biohydrocarbons Production under Standard Refinery Conditions by means of a Representative Ketal Compound of Biocrude. Energy Technology, (2016).

5. B. Louis et al., Biomass-assisted Zeolite Syntheses as a Tool for Designing New Acid Catalysts. ChemCatChem 9, 2065-2079 (2017).

6. C. S. Cardoso et al., Improving textural properties of γ-alumina by using second generation biomass in conventional hydrothermal method. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials 207, 134-141 (2015).

7. E. S. Gomes et al., Strategy to design zeolite catalysts in the presence of biomass. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials, (2017).