Renewable Gasoline, Solvents, and Fuel Additives from 2,3-Butanediol: new research

August 14, 2016 |

In California, a US Navy research team at China Lake led by Ben Harvey reported that 2,3-Butanediol, which has received a significant amount of interest based on the ability to generate it at much higher titer than n-butanol owing tothe relatively low toxicity of 2,3-BD to the producing organism, “can be converted to butenes over bifunctional Cu/ZSM-5 catalysts”. These butenes, the team said, can serve as feedstocks to jet and diesel on “the conversion of biomass sugars into intermediate molecules that can serve as platformsfor the synthesis of renewable fuels, solvents, polymers, and fine chemicals.”

In this round of research, which is highlighted in ChemSusChem, “2,3-BD was selectively dehydrated in a solvent-free process to a complex mixture of 2-ethyl-2,4,5-trimethyl-1,3-dioxolanes and 4,5-dimethyl-2-isopropyl dioxolanes with the heterogeneous acid catalyst Amberlyst-15. The purified dioxolane mixture exhibited an antiknock index of 90.5, comparable to high octane gasoline, and a volumetric net heat of combustion 34% higher than ethanol.

The solubility of the dioxolane mixture in water was only 0.8 g per 100 mL, nearly an order of magnitude lower than the common gasoline oxygenate methyl tert-butyl ether. The dioxolane mixture has potential applications as a sustainable gasoline blending component, diesel oxygenate, and industrial solvent.”

The team concluded that “Although the study of TMED is still in its infancy, the current work suggests that other alkyl dioxolanes warrant further study as fuel additives. A wide variety of dioxolane molecules can be accessed by the reaction of renewable diols with ketones and aldehydes, allowing for custom tailoring of fuel and solvent properties.

In particular, the ability to efficiently generate 2,3-BD from a variety of biomass sources through fermentation suggests that 2,3-BD is an important platform molecule that should be exploited as a versatile intermediate to sustainable fuels and chemicals.”

More on the story.

Category: Research

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