2007 Spring Symposium

 
Johnathan E. Hol­la­day,^* James F. White, John G. Frye, Alan Zach­er, and Todd Wer­py
Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry
Rich­land, WA 99337 (USA)
^*john.​holladay@​pnl.​gov

Abstract — Advances in catal­y­sis are impor­tant endeav­ors to empow­er biore­finer­ies and the use of renew­able feeds. This paper presents the devel­op­ment of effec­tive cat­a­lysts for aque­ous phase pro­cess­ing. The focus of the work will be of hydro­gena­tion and hydrogenol­y­sis and will include exam­ples of upgrad­ing of sug­ar alco­hols (sor­bitol and glyc­erol) and fer­men­ta­tion prod­ucts such as amino acids and diacids into chem­i­cal prod­ucts.

Choice of sup­port has a tremen­dous impact on catal­y­sis per­for­mance and sta­bil­i­ty. We have shown gran­u­lar and extrud­ed car­bon sup­ports to be par­tic­u­lar­ly sta­ble to hydrother­mal con­di­tions as mea­sured by crush strength ver­sus sil­i­ca or alu­mi­na sup­ports (see Fig­ure 1). Rutile Tita­ni­um has also shown high strength. Gran­u­lar car­bons have a very dif­fer­ent pore struc­ture than car­bon extru­dates which can impact cat­a­lyst per­for­mance.

In the exam­ple of upgrad­ing of sug­ar alco­hols the sup­port plays a role on selec­tive adsorp­tion of reagents and prod­ucts. In addi­tion to the sup­port, the inter­ac­tions between nick­el and rhe­ni­um play a piv­otal role in the cat­a­lyst. An extreme exam­ple of the reac­tiv­i­ty dif­fer­ence is shown in Fig­ure 2 (batch con­di­tions, 200 °C, 1200 psig H₂). In addi­tion to nick­el and rhe­ni­um we will also dis­cuss results with sil­ver, cop­per, and ruthe­ni­um. Final­ly, using two addi­tion­al sys­tems we will high­light gen­er­al tech­ni­cal chal­lenges drawn from our work with fer­men­ta­tion prod­ucts.