One-pot reaction-separation process to produce jet fuel

Abstract

The world production of chemicals and fuels is predominantly based on the conversion of nonrenewable raw materials, such as coal, natural gas, and oil. Nowadays, there are increasing ways to produce fuels from biomass, such as producing fuel alcohol from lignocellulose, obtaining liquid fuels through carbon bond coupling of fermentation products to produce fuels. Herein, we transformed the short-chain acetone-n-butanol-ethanol (ABE) into long-chain straight-chain, branched, and cyclic jet-fuel-range products via self-condensation of acetone, Guerbet reaction of ABE, Pd/C-KOH/K3PO4 catalyzed alkylation, and the separation was carried out simultaneously. After the condensation reaction of ABE catalyzed by KOH/K3PO4 with or without Pd/C at high temperature, the ABE can be transformed into long-chain substances ranging from C7 to C12 (lower than 5% yield), which can be used as the precursor of the high-value fuels. Furthermore, most of the water in the ABE solution can be removed, and the water content decreased from 60 % to about 5%–8%. Future work will be concentrated on more liquid–liquid equilibria data of the ABE-water system at different temperatures and the design of highly-efficient catalysts to improve the reaction rate and the selectivity to the desired straight-chain, branched, and cyclic C7-C12 products.

Keywords

• Biofuel
• Biobutanol
• ABE conversion
• Jet fuels
• Separation