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Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in...
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Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries

A special issue of Catalysts (ISSN 2073-4344). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomass Catalysis".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 16222

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Consuelo Alvarez-Galvan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustainable Energy and Chemistry Group, Instituto de Catálisis y Petroleoquímica, CSIC, Marie Curie, 2, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Interests: heterogeneous catalysis; energy and environmental catalysis; green chemistry; biofuels; CO2 reduction; hydrocarbons reforming/partial oxidation; solar energy conversion systems
Dr. Jose M. Campos-Martin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustainable Energy and Chemistry Group (EQS Instituto de Catálisis y Petroleoquímica, CSIC, Marie Curie, 2, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Interests: novel homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic processes; lignocellulosic biomass treatment by low temperature and energy methods; hydrotreatment of vegetable oils and fats; alternative elimination de sulfur from fuel: oxidative desulfurization (ODS) or adsorption
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The COP21 Paris Agreement calls for maximum greenhouse gas emissions to be reached as soon as possible, in order to “strike a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and absorptions by greenhouse gas sinks” in the second half of the 21st century. A main approach to reach this goal is the development of innovative, cost-efficient, and highly effective methods to produce fuels and chemicals from biomass residues. This transition to a carbon-neutral and circular economy aims at environmental protection, but while at the same time maintaining economic growth and without foregoing the actual efficiency of the fossil-based system.

At present, great efforts are being made toward the transition from a “linear economy” to a “circular economy”, where all the waste generated by the production system must be reused and transformed into raw materials, which then enter again in multiple points of the chain of value of the productive system, promoting energy saving, the use of renewable energy sources, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The transformation of biomass residues into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries can play in this context a critical role. The conversion processes to convert biomass-based feedstocks into the final product are numerous and can be mechanical, physical, biochemical, and thermochemical.

Among these transformations, catalysts play a critical role in reaching affordable yields to the desired product from a technoeconomic analysis point of view. In this framework, the scientific community has a key role, since it can contribute to the development and implementation of new economic and efficient technologies that fulfill the present fuel and chemical properties and demand.

This Special Issue, entitled “Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries", will collect original research papers, reviews, short communications, and commentaries reflecting the state-of-the-art and future applications in this field, with particular emphasis on their application at both laboratory and industrial scale.

Dr. Consuelo Alvarez-Galvan
Dr. Jose M. Campos-Martin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Catalysts is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • catalysts
  • biomass
  • biofuels
  • renewable chemicals
  • biorefineries

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3194 KiB  
Article
Influence of Nutrient-Stress Conditions on Chlorella vulgaris Biomass Production and Lipid Content
by Patryk Ratomski and Małgorzata Hawrot-Paw
Catalysts 2021, 11(5), 573; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/catal11050573 - 29 Apr 2021
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 4244
Abstract
Microalgal biomass and its cellular components are used as substrates for the production of fuels. A valuable group among the components of microalgal biomass is lipids, which act as a precursor for the production of biodiesel in the transesterification process. Some methods, including [...] Read more.
Microalgal biomass and its cellular components are used as substrates for the production of fuels. A valuable group among the components of microalgal biomass is lipids, which act as a precursor for the production of biodiesel in the transesterification process. Some methods, including the creation of stressful conditions, are applied to increase the accumulation of lipids. This study aimed to determine the effect of limited nutrient access on the growth and development of the microalga Chlorella vulgaris and the amount of lipids stored in its cells. Aquaculture wastewater (AWW) was used in the study as a source of nutrients at doses of 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. The amount of microalgal biomass, optical density, lipid content after extraction of the biomass in Soxhlet apparatus and chlorophyll a content were determined. It was observed that the microalgae efficiently used the nutrients contained in the AWW. The largest amount of biomass was obtained in AWW80 (727 ± 19.64 mg·L−1). The OD680 (0.492 ± 0.00) determined under the same conditions was almost five times higher in AWW than in the synthetic medium. Under nutrient-stress conditions, the content of lipids in biomass ranged from 5.75% (AWW80) to 11.81% (AWW20). The highest content of chlorophyll a in microalgal cells was obtained in AWW20 (206 ± 11.33 mg∙m−3). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries)
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15 pages, 3816 KiB  
Article
Selectively Producing Acetic Acid via Boric Acid-Catalyzed Fast Pyrolysis of Woody Biomass
by Xueli Hou, Zhen Li and Zhijun Zhang
Catalysts 2021, 11(4), 494; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/catal11040494 - 13 Apr 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2940
Abstract
Boric acid is recently proved to be a good substitute for conventional acidic catalytic materials. However, few studies used boric acid as a catalyst in biomass pyrolysis. This study focused on the catalytic effects of boric acid (BA) on pyrolysis behaviors of woody [...] Read more.
Boric acid is recently proved to be a good substitute for conventional acidic catalytic materials. However, few studies used boric acid as a catalyst in biomass pyrolysis. This study focused on the catalytic effects of boric acid (BA) on pyrolysis behaviors of woody biomass. The birch wood flour (WF) was used as feedstock and treated by impregnation of boric acid solution. Both untreated and boric acid-treated samples (BW) were characterized by FTIR and SEM. Thermogravimetry (TG) and pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) techniques were used for studying mass loss, composition, and distribution of evolved volatiles formed from pyrolysis process. Additionally, a small fixed-bed pyrolyzer with an amplificated loading amount was used to prepare liquid products, and further, GC/MS were used to analyze the composition of these liquid products. Different pyrolysis temperatures and boric acid/wood flour mass ratios were also studied. The main results are as follows. Boric acid infiltrated into both cell cavity and cell wall through impregnation treatment. FTIR analysis showed that boric acid reacted with wood flour to form B-O-C bond during the treatment. After the treatment of boric acid, the initial degradation temperatures and residual carbon contents were increased, while the maximum weight loss rates were decreased. Boric acid significantly altered the composition and distribution of volatile pyrolysis products of wood flour. It significantly increased the contents of small molecule compounds such as acetic acid and furfural but, decreased the contents of phenol derivatives with high molecular weights. And these changes became more pronounced as the temperature increased. When mass ratio of boric acid (BA) to wood flour (WF) was 2, the acetic acid accounted for 91.28% of the total product in the pyrolysis liquid, which was 14 times higher than that of untreated wood flour. Boric acid effectively catalyzed fast pyrolysis of woody biomass to selectively produce acetic acid Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries)
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16 pages, 2127 KiB  
Article
Influence of the Reduction Temperature and the Nature of the Support on the Performance of Zirconia and Alumina-Supported Pt Catalysts for n-Dodecane Hydroisomerization
by Diana García-Pérez, Maria Consuelo Alvarez-Galvan, Jose M. Campos-Martin and Jose L. G. Fierro
Catalysts 2021, 11(1), 88; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/catal11010088 - 11 Jan 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2346
Abstract
Catalysts based on zirconia- and alumina-supported tungsten oxides (15 wt % W) with a small loading of platinum (0.3 wt % Pt) were selected to study the influence of the reduction temperature and the nature of the support on the hydroisomerization of n [...] Read more.
Catalysts based on zirconia- and alumina-supported tungsten oxides (15 wt % W) with a small loading of platinum (0.3 wt % Pt) were selected to study the influence of the reduction temperature and the nature of the support on the hydroisomerization of n-dodecane. The reduction temperature has a major influence on metal dispersion, which impacts the catalytic activity. In addition, alumina and zirconia supports show different catalytic properties (mainly acid site strength and surface area), which play an important role in the conversion. The NH3-TPD profiles indicate that the acidity in alumina-based catalysts is clearly higher than that in their zirconia counterparts; this acidity can be attributed to a stronger interaction of the WOx species with alumina. The PtW/Al catalyst was found to exhibit the best catalytic performance for the hydroisomerization of n-dodecane based on its higher acidity, which was ascribed to its larger surface area relative to that of its zirconia counterparts. The selectivity for different hydrocarbons (C7–10, C11 and i-C12) was very similar for all the catalysts studied, with branched C12 hydrocarbons being the main products obtained (~80%). The temperature of 350 °C was clearly the best reduction temperature for all the catalysts studied in a trickled-bed-mode reactor. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries)
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13 pages, 1469 KiB  
Article
Experimental and Kinetic Study on the Production of Furfural and HMF from Glucose
by Ouwen He, Yangfan Zhang, Pan Wang, Lina Liu, Qian Wang, Nan Yang, Wenjie Li, Pascale Champagne and Hongbing Yu
Catalysts 2021, 11(1), 11; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/catal11010011 - 24 Dec 2020
Cited by 33 | Viewed by 5623
Abstract
Furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) have been identified as promising bio-platform furans that have a wide range of potential applications as biofuels, bioplastics, and biochemicals. Furfural and HMF are typically synthesized from the substrates of C5 sugars and C6 sugars, respectively. Furfural [...] Read more.
Furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) have been identified as promising bio-platform furans that have a wide range of potential applications as biofuels, bioplastics, and biochemicals. Furfural and HMF are typically synthesized from the substrates of C5 sugars and C6 sugars, respectively. Furfural can also be produced from C6 sugars, which is technically more challenging owing to the higher energy requirement for carbon–carbon bond cleavage. In this study, the simultaneous production of furfural and HMF from glucose was conducted over different binary catalyst systems of Brønsted acids and Lewis acids using γ-valerolactone (GVL) as the solvent. A promising performance was achieved by a SnSO4-H2SO4 coupling catalyst, with an optimized furfural yield of 42% and an HMF yield of 34% at 443 K in GVL. In addition, a kinetics study was performed in order to understand the mechanism of the simultaneous formation of furfural and HMF from glucose at different temperatures and GVL/water ratios. The results showed that the ratio of furfural to HMF production rate at different temperatures (433 to 463 K) or GVL/water ratios (90 to 80%) was constant close to 1, suggesting that the production of furfural and HMF might follow similar reaction pathways. Finally, the reaction pathway of glucose conversion to furfural and HMF was proposed based on the experimental and kinetics studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catalysts for Processing Biomass into Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals in Biorefineries)
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