STTR Phase I: Effect of Alcohol Concentration on Lactic to Acrylic Selectivity and Deactivation Rate over Na-FAU Zeolite Catalysts

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is to commercialize a process to produce low carbon, bio-based acrylic acid and acrylates for paints, coatings, adhesives, and superabsorbent polymer markets. This $10 billion market has been seeking a bio-based, low-carbon alternative for decades, with economics serving as the major barrier. This project’s high yield lactic-to-acrylic technology will help grow the corn utilization industry and provide high paying jobs across rural America as well as economic competitiveness in global markets. Every plant constructed to convert lactic acid fermented from sugar into drop-in, low-carbon, renewable acrylic acid is estimated to bring $12 million in economic activity to a county with significant bio-based sugar crops (e.g., corn, beets, cane). Approximately 250 plants are needed at this scale to convert today’s petrochemical acrylic acid to a bio-based source.This STTR Phase I project proposes to utilize high alcohol content feedstocks using catalyst innovation comprising engineered amine treatment of cation-exchanged zeolites. The catalyst has been shown to outperform numerous previously-utilized catalysts with 90% yields of acrylic products during catalyzed dehydration of lactic acid. So far, those in the field have investigated feeds containing aqueous solutions of methyl lactate or lactic acid in concentrations from 10-40%. Methanol has not been used as a co-feed in concentrations greater than 5%, therefore this project will investigate higher concentrations of alcohols (5%-80%, using methanol or ethanol). The project will use both methanol and ethanol as the alcohol size is likely to alter active site reactivity and/or shift the equilibrium of esterified versus acidic acrylate products. These experiments address two areas of concern in the commercialization of the technology and determine the relative dehydration rates of ethanol and lactic acid under competitive adsorption conditions to provide foundational information required for reactor scaling. The proposed research also increases the percentage of alkyl acrylates formed by forcing the gas phase esterification of acrylic acid with alcohol towards completion.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.