Development of Liquid Biofuels and Chiral Molecules from Biomass

进入21世纪以来，人类文明一直面临着两大问题：化石燃料的枯竭，以及大量使用化石燃料生产能源和各种化学品所造成的环境问题。在不牺牲我们生活水平的情况下，解决这些问题的一个有效方法是使用生物质而不是化石燃料作为生产能源和化学品的替代原材料来源。使用农业和林业残余物、动物粪便、藻类和农业食品加工废物等低价值生物质是非常可取的，因为它不会与农业和林业产品的生产竞争。 ** 该拟议计划的长期目标是开发技术上可行、经济上可行和环境友好的工艺，从生物质废物中生产高质量的液体生物燃料和增值手性化合物。** 建议的两个研究主题之一，是集中研究生产高品质的运输燃料，以满足现有基础设施（例如汽车引擎、管道和加油站）的要求。采用水热液化技术对多种生物质废弃物进行共液化，以提高生物质油的粗产率，优化产品分布。随后，将开发和应用新型催化剂，将原油生物油升级为与石油衍生燃料相当的生物燃料。预期成果将减少对化石燃料的依赖，提高可持续性，并为农业，林业和水产养殖业增加额外的收入来源。** 另一个研究主题是开发生产纯手性分子的有效工艺。手性分子是那些可以重新排列其结构以产生镜像形式的分子。这些镜像形式，称为对映体，是不相同的。分子的手性性质在制药工业中具有主要关注点，因为手性药物分子的不同对映体在与活生物体中的蛋白质、糖和DNA相互作用时可能引起非常不同的反应。一个戏剧性的例子是沙利度胺悲剧发生在20世纪60年代初，当时沙利度胺作为两种对映体的混合物出售。沙利度胺的一种对映体可缓解晨吐，而另一种对映体可导致出生缺陷。目前，人们对单一对映体的需求正在迅速增长，以获得更安全的药物制剂。本研究将针对两种制备单一对映体的技术：一种是传统方法（结晶拆分）的改进，另一种是新兴的研究领域，即从生物质液化产生的粗生物油中提取小手性分子结构单元。预期的结果将为制药行业提供更有效和更具成本效益的方法来获得单一对映体化合物，降低手性药物开发早期阶段的成本。

Since the beginning of the 21st century, human civilization has been facing two major problems: the depletion of fossil fuels, and environmental problems caused by the extensive use of fossil fuels for the production of energy and a variety of chemicals. An effective way to address these concerns, without sacrificing our living standards, is to use biomass instead of fossil fuels as an alternative source of raw material for producing energy and chemicals. The use of low value biomass such as agricultural and forestry residues, animal manure, algae and agri-food processing waste is highly desirable as it does not compete with the production of agricultural and forestry products. **The long term goal of this proposed program is to develop technically feasible, economically viable and environmentally friendly processes for producing high quality liquid biofuels and value-added chiral compounds from biomass wastes. **One of the two proposed research themes is focused on the production of high quality transportation fuels meeting the requirements of existing infrastructure (e.g. vehicle engines, pipelines and filling stations). Hydrothermal liquefaction technology will be employed to co-liquefy a variety of biomass wastes in order to increase crude bio-oil yield and optimize the product distribution. Subsequently, novel catalysts will be developed and applied to upgrade crude bio-oil into biofuels which are comparable to the fuels derived from petroleum. Anticipated outcomes will reduce dependence on fossil fuels, improve sustainability, and add extra revenue streams to agricultural, forestry and aquaculture sectors. **The other research theme is the development of efficient processes for the production of pure chiral molecules. Chiral molecules are ones that can rearrange their structure to give rise to mirror image forms. These mirror image forms, called enantiomers, are not identical. The chiral nature of molecules has a major concern in the pharmaceutical industry, since the different enantiomers of a chiral drug molecule may cause very distinct reactions, when interacted with proteins, sugars and DNA in living organisms. A dramatic example is the thalidomide tragedy happened in the early 1960s, when thalidomide was sold as a mixture of two enantiomers. One enantiomer of thalidomide alleviated morning sickness while the other enantiomer caused birth defects. There has been a rapidly growing demand of pure enantiomer compounds for a safer drug formulation.The proposed research will target at two technologies for the preparation of single enantiomers: one, a twist on a conventional method (crystallization resolution) , and the second, an emerging research area, based on the extraction of small chiral molecule building blocks from crude bio-oil derived from liquefaction of biomass. Anticipated outcomes will provide pharmaceutical industries more efficient and cost-effective processes to obtain single enantiomer compounds, reducing the costs of the early stage of chiral drug development.