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8261559 
Meetings & Symposia 
Intercepted hydrolysis strategies for biomass refineries 
Robinson, JM; Burrow, J; Caudle, R; Galvan, L 
2005 
0 
Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society
ISSN: 0065-7727 
AMER CHEMICAL SOC 
Washington, DC 
ACS Fuel Chemistry Meeting, Fall 2005 
50 
2 
671-972 
English 
WOS:000236797303372 
Massive historical efforts to fractionate biomass into monomeric aldose sugars have not achieved high yields in a commercial manner. Lack of success has been attributed to the very complex nature of various biomass resources, severe conditions required, concomitant degradation reactions, lack of reagent selectivity between biomass components, and commercially impractical reactors. At the heart of the biomass hydrolysis problem is the inherent reactivity of the aldose sugar products required for fermentation into ethanol. A chemical process for the production of various hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals from biomass derived polyols has been developed. Polyols are converted into mainly liquid hydrocarbons by reduction with boiling hydriodic acid. Hydrocarbons phase separate and the aqueous acid is recycled. A second step converts remaining halocarbons into alkenes. C12 alkenes can be hydrogenated to increase octane rating from 78 to ∼ 83 AKI and hexenes may be hydrogenated to solvent grade hexane for seed oil extraction. Polyols are also converted by other means into hydrogen, or small alcohols. Polyols and aldonic acids provide alternative sugar platforms for biomass conversion to hydrocarbon fuels and solvents, alcohols, lactone fuel additives, hydrogen and other chemicals. Economic estimates from engineering models of these intercepted hydrolysis schemes and products are presented. This is an abstract of a paper presented ACS Fuel Chemistry Meeting (Washington, DC Fall 2005).