Studies On The Hydrodeoxygenation Of Biomass Derived Oxygenates To Jet Fuel

The exploration of an alternative jet fuel has been drawing worldwide attention because of the double thrests from oil shortage and environment concerns. The levy of carbon tax further accelerates the development of renewable jet fuel. As the only renewable carbon-containing source in the world, the production of jet fuel from biomass becomes one of the most promising routes. Catalytic conversion of oxygenates is the final step of bio-jet fuel production and is an extremely promising direction in the field of catalysis. In this thesis, a series of jet fuel precursors, which were derived from biomass biorefinery, were selectively hydro-deoxygenated to jet fuel. The catalytic mechanism of different catalysts including metal/metal oxide and metal/acid bifunctional catalysts in the hydro-deoxygenation was also investigated. The main contents and results were shown as follows:1) Two innovative algal jet fuel production pathways were developed and tested based on the deeply understanding of feedstock reactivity and catalytic properties of different catalysts. The first one is hydrolysis, decarboxylation and multi-branched isomers production through catalytic hydro-isomerization. The second pathway is integration of fractional extraction and selective hydro-cracking to avoid the influence of polar lipids.2) The hydro-deoxygenation of terpene alcohols, fatty alcohols, and fats with metal/acid bifunctional catalysts such as Pt/ZSM-22, Pt/Al-MCF, and Pt/Al₂O₃ was studied in detail, which suggested a clear correlation among feedstock, acidy in bifunctional catalyst carrier, and product distribution.3) A system for Mo⁵⁺ based catalytic hydrodeoxygenation of lignin derived phenols under atmospheric pressure featuring 100% of both conversion and selectivity was developed. The XPS analysis showed Mo⁵⁺ played a key role in the hydrodeoxygenation; 4) The effect of H₂O to the hydro-deoxygenation was determined, which exhibited the H₂O significantly inhibited the hydroisomerization reaction of fatty alcohol on Pt/ZSM-22; 5) To avoid the influence of water, sulphur, and nitrogen, shape-selective catalysis and hydrogen spillover were integrated to design and synthesis new Pt catalyst supported by mesoporous KA zeolite molecular sieve with high dispersion. The resulting catalyst was characterized excellent sulfur-resistant characteristic, which still kept the catalytic hydrogenation performance at the presence of 3% H₂S.