From lignin to cycloparaffins and aromatics: directional synthesis of jet and diesel fuel range biofuels using biomass.

The continual growth in commercial aviation fuels and more strict environmental legislations have led to immense interest in developing green aviation fuels from biomass. This paper demonstrated a controllable transformation of lignin into jet and diesel fuel range hydrocarbons, involving directional production of C8-C15 aromatics by the catalytic depolymerization of lignin into C6-C8 low carbon aromatic monomers coupled with the alkylation of aromatics, and the directional production of C8-C15 cycloparaffins by the hydrogenation of aromatics. The key step, the production of the desired C8-C15 aromatics with the selectivity up to 94.3%, was achieved by the low temperature alkylation reactions of the lignin-derived monomers using ionic liquid. The synthetic biofuels basically met the main technical requirements of conventional jet fuels. The transformation potentially provides a useful way for the development of cycloparaffinic and aromatic components in jet fuels using renewable lignocellulose biomass.

Directional synthesis of ethylbenzene through catalytic transformation of lignin.

Transformation of lignin to ethylbenzene can provide an important bulk raw material for the petrochemical industry. This work explored the production of ethylbenzene from lignin through the directional catalytic depolymerization of lignin into the aromatic monomers followed by the selective alkylation of the aromatic monomers. For the first step, the aromatics selectivity of benzene derived from the catalytic depolymerization of lignin reached about 90.2 C-mol% over the composite catalyst of Re-Y/HZSM-5 (25). For the alkylation of the aromatic monomers in the second step, the highest selectivity of ethylbenzene was about 72.3 C-mol% over the HZSM-5 (25) catalyst. The reaction pathway for the transformation of lignin to ethylbenzene was also addressed. Present transformation potentially provides a useful approach for the production of the basic petrochemical material and development of high-end chemicals utilizing lignin as the abundant natural aromatic resource.