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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Rational Development Of Carbon-Based Materials For Adsorption-Enhanced Conversion Of Cellulose To Value-Added Chemicals, Paul J. Dornath
Rational Development Of Carbon-Based Materials For Adsorption-Enhanced Conversion Of Cellulose To Value-Added Chemicals, Paul J. Dornath
Doctoral Dissertations
The increasing demands for transportation fuels and commodity chemicals as well as concerns over diminishing fossil fuel resources have driven research efforts towards the efficient utilization of renewable feedstocks, such as naturally abundant lignocellulosic biomass. Co-impregnation of microcrystalline cellulose with dilute sulfuric acid and glucose catalyzed the formation of a(1→6) branches onto b(1→4) glucan prior to ball-milling and reduce the time needed for ball-milling 4-fold compared to impregnation with acid alone. A three dimensionally ordered mesoporous (3DOm) carbon-based catalyst was developed that rapidly hydrolyzed the water-soluble glucan oligomers to 91.2% glucose yield faster than conventional approaches. A structure-property relationship was …
Rational Development Of Solid Lewis Acid Catalysts For Biomass Conversion, Chun-Chih Chang
Rational Development Of Solid Lewis Acid Catalysts For Biomass Conversion, Chun-Chih Chang
Doctoral Dissertations
The need for sustainable production of everyday materials in addition to declining reserves of petroleum-based feedstocks has motivated research into the production of renewable aromatic chemicals from biomass. We have proposed a multistep pathway to produce renewable p-xylene from lignocellulosic biomass using heterogeneous catalysts. The pathway includes formation of glucose by saccharification of cellulose, isomerization of glucose into fructose, dehydration/hydrogenolysis for production of 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), and final step for producing p-xylene from reacting DMF with ethylene. Lewis acid zeolite catalysts (e.g. Sn-BEA, a tin containing molecular sieve with zeolite BEA structure) exhibited critical roles in the pathway because …