Microwave Assisted Acid-catalyzed Cellulose Hydrolysis And Hydrogenolysis Lignin In The Presence Of NiB Amorphous Alloy

Energy resources shortage and environmental pollution are two of the most important and emergent problems faced by our society today. As renewable resources, the investigation of exploration and utilization of biomass into energy has become one of the most important tasks. As a country of shortage energy, the per capita amount of energy is much lower than the level of the world, and as an agricultural country with plenty of biomass resource, the investigation is obviously important.The main purpose of this paper is focused on exploratory investigation of catalytic conversion of biomass materials: cellulose and HBS (high boiling solvents) lignin. The paper is divided into two parts:In the first part, microwave-assisted acid hydrolysis of cellulose for glucose and chemicals production has been carried out. Compared with conventional heating method, the process using microwave irritation has been proven to enable acceleration the hydrolysis of cellulose with good selectivity to glucose. Effects of reaction temperature, reaction time, microwave power, type of the catalyst (metal chlorides such as CuCl₂·2H₂O, AlCl₃, FeCl₃·6H₂O, LaCl₃ and proton acids such as HCl, H₂SO₄, HNO₃, (COOH)₂) and the amount of catalyst on the cellulose hydrolysis. High reaction temperature can speed up cellulose conversion but decreases the selectivity of glucose. A suitable reaction time length is important for achieving higher cellulose conversion under optimal reaction temperature and microwave power. Hydrolysates would be polysaccharides using a shorter reaction time length. Small molecular compounds such as 5-HMF and 1,6-anhydroglucose would be formed with degradation of the selectivity of glucose, if using too long reaction time length, of course, the products of 5-HMF and 1,6-anhydroglucose are high-valued chemicals yet. In addition, metal chlorides (Lewis acids) provide better catalysis for cellulose hydrolysis since they facilitate the C-C bond cracking, compared with the proton acids.In the second part, chemical production from wood and HBS lignin has been explored by coupling the aqueous steam reforming of ethanol with the hydrogenolysis of wood and HBS lignin in the presence of NiB amorphous alloy catalysts in water phase. The products are extracted from wood by organic solvents including methanol and toluene. The effects of reaction parameters such as reaction temperature, reaction time and catalysis dosage on the conversion and product distribution were investigated. GC-MS has been employed to quantitatively and qualitatively identify the products that can be solved in toluene. The coupling of the hydrogen production reaction and hydrogenolysis of linin has been proven to occur in the presence of NiB amorphous alloy catalysts.