Work­shop Chair: George W. Huber, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts-Amherst

Spon­sors:
Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion: Chem­i­cal, Bio­engi­neer­ing, Envi­ron­men­tal and Trans­port Sys­tems, John Regal­b­u­to
Depart­ment of Ener­gy: Office of the Bio­mass, Paul Grabows­ki
Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety-Green Chem­istry Insti­tute


A recent roadmap out­lines the vital impor­tance of cat­a­lysts for cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els. This roadmap is avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly at www​.ecs​.umass​.edu/​b​i​o​f​u​els and is the result of a 2 day work­shop spon­sored by the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and Depart­ment of Ener­gy. This work­shop brought togeth­er more than 70 par­tic­i­pants from acadamia, indus­try and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to pro­vide a uni­fied doc­u­ment on how cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els can become a prac­ti­cal real­i­ty. The roadmap artic­u­lates the cen­tral role of chem­istry, chem­i­cal catal­y­sis, ther­mal pro­cess­ing, and engi­neer­ing in the con­ver­sion of lig­no­cel­lu­losic bio­mass into liq­uid trans­porta­tion fuels includ­ing green gaso­line, green diesel and green jet fuel.

Six thrust areas are dis­cussed in the roadmap includ­ing:

• Selec­tive Ther­mal Pro­cess­ing of Lig­no­cel­lu­losic Bio­mass
• Uti­liza­tion of Petro­le­um Refin­ing Tech­nolo­gies for Bio­fu­el Pro­duc­tion
• Aque­ous-phase Cat­alyt­ic Pro­cess­ing of Sug­ars and Bio-oils
• Cat­alyt­ic Con­ver­sion of Syn-gas
• Process Engi­neer­ing and Design
• Cross Cut­ting 21st Cen­tu­ry Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Infra­struc­ture for a New Gen­er­a­tion of Bio­fu­el Research

This work­shop builds on the suc­cess of four pre­vi­ous NSF and DOE work­shops. The pre­vi­ous NSF work­shops include: “Catal­y­sis for Biore­new­ables Con­ver­sion (www​.egr​.msu​.edu/​a​p​p​s​/​n​s​f​w​o​r​k​s​hop)” and “Design of Cat­a­lyst Sys­tems for Biore­new­ables (www3​.cbe​.ias​tate​.edu/​n​s​f​b​i​o​r​en/)”. The pre­vi­ous DOE work­shops include: “Break­ing the Bio­log­i­cal Bar­ri­ers to Cel­lu­losic Ethanol” (genomic​s​gtl​.ener​gy​.gov/​b​i​o​f​u​e​l​s​/​b​2​b​w​o​r​k​s​h​o​p​.​s​h​tml) and “Ther­mo­chem­i­cal Con­ver­sion of Bio­mass” (www​.ther​mochem​.bio​mass​.gov​tools​.us/).

For cel­lu­losic bio­fu­els to real­ize their full poten­tial it is vital to over­come the chem­i­cal and engi­neer­ing bar­ri­ers. Recent advances in the­o­ret­i­cal chem­istry com­bined with new in-situ cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion meth­ods allow us to under­stand chem­istry at a fun­da­men­tal­ly new lev­el. Com­bin­ing fun­da­men­tal chem­i­cal under­stand­ing with new meth­ods to syn­the­size nanos­truc­tured cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, the abil­i­ty to design and sim­u­late com­pli­cat­ed reac­tion net­works, and the abil­i­ty to per­form con­cep­tu­al design and opti­miza­tion prob­lems will allow us to engi­neer effi­cient and eco­nom­i­cal process­es for bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion.