Hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation of biomass-derived oxygenates to liquid alkanes for transportation fuels

Abstract

An attractive approach for the production of transportation fuels from renewable biomass resources is to convert oxygenates into alkanes. In this paper, C₅-C₂₀ alkanes formed via the hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation of the oligomers of furfuryl alcohol(FA) can be used as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel fraction. The first step of the process is the oligomers of FA convert into hydrogenated products over Raney Ni catalyst in a batch reactor. The second step of the process converts hydrogenated products to alkanes via hydrodeoxygenation over different bi-functional catalysts include hydrogenation and acidic deoxidization active sites. After this process, the oxygen content decreased from 22.1 wt% in the oligomers of FA to 0.58 wt% in the hydrodeoxygenation products.