Sustainable manufacturing of platform chemicals from biomass

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The manufacture of platform chemicals from sustainable feedstocks is highly desirable. Ligno-cellulosic biomass (e.g. wood and agricultural waste) is a potentially renewable source of some of the carbon and hydrogen required to meet the global demand for platform chemicals, without requiring the use of land, which would otherwise be used to grow food. This biomass can be readily converted by a process known as gasification to a so-called syngas, containing a mixture of H2, CO and, owing to the high oxygen content of biomass, a large amount of CO2. Synthesis gas, derived mainly from fossil fuels, is already converted on an industrial scale to methanol, and to long chain hydrocarbons and oxygenates by the Fischer-Tropsch reaction (FTR). Any CO2 in the syngas does not participate significantly in the FTR, thus the carbon in CO2 is not utilised. Furthermore, whilst the FTR has a good yield, the selectivity is poor, yielding a product with a wide distribution of hydrocarbon chain lengths.The overall goal of this project is to develop and optimise a scalable combination of homogeneous 'frustrated Lewis pair' (FLP) catalyst and sustainable solvent, to selectively convert biomass-derived syngas, including the CO2 fraction, into platform chemicals. Multiple parallel batch reactors and a flow reactor, coupled with on- and off-line analytical methods, will be used to generate catalyst performance data; this will be analysed using e.g. kinetic modelling and/or artificial intelligence to elucidate information on the catalytic cycle, and off-cycle processes such as catalyst deactivation. This data-driven approach may be used to optimise the catalyst structure, and even to optimise the reaction conditions in flow, in real time, through the automated Labview interface.The initial focus of the project will be on achieving high selectivity to ethene, which is readily converted into myriad products, such as polymers. Such novel, selective catalysts would be much better utilised when applied to the targeted synthesis of high value platform chemicals subsequently used to make long-lived products, which sequester carbon, rather than much lower value transport fuels typically produced by the FTR, which are quickly burned, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.