On Wednesday, July 31, join the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium (ChemCatBio) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office for a webinar entitled, “Single-Step Catalytic Conversion of Ethanol to n-Butene-Rich Olefins and 1,3-Butadiene Chemical Coproduct.”
Ethanol is an attractive feedstock for the production of fuels and chemicals as it is already produced at commercial scale and can be produced from a variety of renewable biomass and waste sources. In addition, the ethanol “blend wall” coupled with advances in production efficiency and feedstock diversification is expected to lead to excess ethanol at competitive prices. Within ChemCatBio’s Upgrading of Indirect Liquefaction Intermediates Project, research teams from multiple National Labs have been collaborating on the development of catalytic upgrading routes for this key intermediate. These routes include a flexible catalytic process for the single-step conversion of ethanol to either n-butene-rich olefins, as fuel precursors, or to 1,3-butadiene as a chemical product precursor over mixed oxide or zeolite-based catalysts. Production of n-butene-rich olefins directly from ethanol represents a more economic route to jet- and diesel-range hydrocarbon fuels relative to the state-of-the-art technology. In this presentation, two National Laboratory investigators will discuss collaborative efforts to develop this economically viable ethanol catalytic upgrading process technology using commercially relevant process streams.