Oxygenated commodity chemicals from chemo‐catalytic conversion of biomass derived heterocycles

Abstract

Biomass is an abundant source of renewable carbon, which could form the basis for sustainable fuels and chemicals to replace those derived from fossil fuel resources. During the past decade there have been multiple large projects focused on producing renewable fuels from biomass. These pioneer processes have often struggled to reach commercialization due to operational challenges, scale up challenges, and the low margins and high product volumes required for economic viability. The production of oxygenated chemicals from biomass offers several advantages compared to production of biofuels including: (1) chemicals are higher value, allowing for profitability at moderate scale (10–30 kton/yr) and sometimes even small scale (<1 kton/yr); (2) oxygenated chemicals require less deoxygenation, and therefore less hydrogen input and higher product mass yields compared to completely deoxygenated fuels; and, (3) target chemicals use the inherent functionalities (e.g., alcohols, cyclic ethers, C = C and C = O bonds, chiral centers) present in biomass. Furthermore bio-based chemicals can also be coproduced with biofuels thereby improving the economics of bio-refineries. Synergies between bio-refineries and conventional refineries (e.g., utilizing hydrogen surplus for hydrogenation; integrating refinery waste heat) could further improve economic viability.