Biofuel Production From Acetone-butanol-ethanol Zymotic Mixture Over Bifunctional Mg-containing Catalysts

Given the global energy crisis and the growing environmental concerns stemming from the exploitation and combustion of fossil fuels,immense attention has been paid in academia and industry to the production of renewable liquid transportation fuels and chemicals via the utilization of nonfood biomass.A pioneering strategy has been proposed in which ABE(acetone-butanol-ethanol)fermentation mixture derived from lignocellulosic biomass was upgraded into high-value biofuels through the combination of extractive fermentation and the subsequent chemical catalytic conversion.Aimed at achieving efficient directed catalytic conversion,herein,we specially designed and prepared Ni/CaMgO and Ni/MgSiO for alkylation and hydrodeoxygenation(HDO)reactions during the upgrading of the ABE fermentation mixture.Considering the strong interaction between Ni and Mg species,for obtaining highly dispersed Ni nanoparticle and improving the stability,the Mg decorated catalysts exhibited great catalytic performance:During the alkylation reaction,a selectivity of 63.9%under a conversion of 94.2%was achieved for C8～C15 ketones and alcohols at 240℃,24 h,which is higher than that over other heterogeneous alkali-based catalysts;and the obtained mixture was completely converted into the corresponding alkanes at 190℃,1 MPa for hydrodeoxygenation reaction.It is worth noting that jet fuels or gasoline could be efficiently and selectively obtained by facile adjustment of the composition of the ABE fermentation product.Moreover,investigation on the structure-activity correlation confirmed that the outstanding activity of Ni/MgSiO for HDO could be attributed to the synergic catalysis between Ni0 and strong acid sites(As).Overall,this work offer three advantages:(1)selectively upgrading zymotic biomass wastes into biofuels,realizing the resource utilization of wastes,(2)replacing the expensive noble metal Pd by the base metal Ni,reducing the cost of catalyst and providing a foundation for industrial application,(3)and realizing the HDO process under mild conditions,complying with the principles of "green chemistry".It opens a new possibility for biofuel production,which is conductive to the rational design and implementation of highly active heterogeneous catalysts.