Development of Liquid Biofuels and Chiral Molecules from Biomass

进入21世纪以来，人类文明面临着两大问题：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造成的环境问题。在不牺牲我们的生活水平的情况下，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。利用低价值的生物质，如农林残渣、动物粪便、藻类和农业食品加工废料是非常可取的，因为它不与农林产品的生产竞争。**这项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。**拟议的两个研究主题之一是生产满足现有基础设施(例如车辆发动机、管道和加油站)要求的高质量运输燃料。将采用水热液化技术对多种生物质废弃物进行共液化，以提高原油生物油产量和优化产品分布。随后，将开发和应用新型催化剂，将原油生物油转化为与从石油中提取的燃料相当的生物燃料。预期的结果将减少对化石燃料的依赖，改善可持续性，并为农业、林业和水产养殖部门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高效工艺。手性分子是一种可以重新排列其结构以产生镜像形式的分子。这些被称为对映体的镜像形式并不完全相同。由于手性药物分子的不同对映体与生物体中的蛋白质、糖和DNA相互作用时，可能会引起非常不同的反应，因此分子的手性性质在制药行业中是一个主要问题。一个戏剧性的例子是发生在20世纪60年代初的沙利度胺悲剧，当时沙利度胺被作为两种对映体的混合物出售。沙利度胺的一个对映体减轻了晨吐，而另一个对映体导致了出生缺陷。为了更安全的药物制剂，人们对纯对映体化合物的需求迅速增长。拟议的研究将针对两种制备单一对映体的技术：一种是对传统方法(结晶拆分)的改进，另一种是基于从生物质液化得到的原油中提取小的手性分子构建块的新兴研究领域。预期的结果将为制药行业提供获得单一对映体化合物的更有效和更具成本效益的过程，从而降低手性药物开发的早期阶段的成本。

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.