Process and Nanometal Catalyst for Converting Plant Materials to Chemical Building Blocks and Hydrogen Feedstock for Fuel Cell Applications

University of Kansas
posted on 11/30/2010

The invention is a process for efficiently converting cellulosic materials to polyols in a single pot, in the presence of an anchored Ru nanoparticle catalyst in a modified solvent system. The current methods for hydrogenolysis of cellulosic materials are carried out in aqueous medium and the reactions limit with hydrogen availability into the liquid phase. This process uses alcohols as a co-solvent along with water to improve hydrogen solubility into the liquid phase and hence improves hydrogenolysis efficiency in the presence of the Ru nano-catalyst.

Suggested Uses

This process has great potential for converting abundantly available cellulosic materials to C-6 alcohols which are renewable building blocks for chemicals. The polyols can also be used for hydrogen production by aqueous phase reforming for fuel cell applications.

Advantages

Previous processes used water as a solvent, which has poor hydrogen solubility. Therefore, very often the activity and selectivity to sorbitol was not very high or required very high hydrogen pressure conditions. By using alcohol as a co-solvent with water, in the presence of an Ru nanoparticle, this process creates a substantial improvement in polyol selectivity and an efficient catalyst-solvent system for hydrogenation of glucose to sorbitol.

Innovation Details

Detailed Description

The process of this invention reports a novel immobilized nano Ru catalysts that gives high conversion for cellobiose (100 %) to sorbitol (78.8 %) in a single step. The conversion of cellobiose to sorbitol involves two steps. In the first step, cellobiose is hydrolyzed in presence of an acidic promoter to glucose while in the second step glucose is hydrogenated to sorbitol in the presence of a suitable catalyst.

Limitations

The invention uses mineral acids which may be considered as a disadvantage of this process. Use of acidic supports for immobilizing the Ru nanoparticles to make a bifunctional catalyst may be a good approach to overcome this problem.

File Number: 09KU106L

Web site: https://www.cebc.ku.edu/

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