Production of 1,3-butadiene from ethanol using zeolite-based catalysts

The strategy of Carbon Neutrality was widely accepted by many countries around the world due to contemporary climate change issues including global warming. It is urgent to switch traditional fossil fuels to clean energy as alternatives like wind, solar, and biomass to make the world sustainable. Biomass-derived low carbon resources have a wide range of applications in the production of basic chemicals like ethanol, which can be generated from sugarcane through fermentation. However, the utilization of ethanol to produce downstream value-added chemicals need to develop novel technologies.

Therefore, the aim of the PhD project focuses on the development of heterogeneous catalysts in the application of ethanol conversion. Zeolite-supported metal materials were investigated as heterogeneous catalysts in the process of ethanol conversion process due to their high catalytic activity and thermal stability of the structures. The zeolite-based catalysts were synthesized and investigated in the research about the conversion of ethanol and the formation of 1,3-butadiene. The 1,3-butadiene is a fundamental monomer to produce styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), which is the largest synthetic rubber in the tyre industry. The PhD project investigated the ethanol conversion to 1,3-butadiene in this tandem reaction, and the catalytic active sites were studied for different steps. The synthesized zeolite-based catalysts were analyzed using different characterization techniques such as nitrogen physisorption, XRD, SEM, TEM, and XPS. The catalytic evaluation of the as-prepared catalysts was investigated in detail to explore the intrinsical properties of the active sites. The results highlight the application and improvement of zeolite materials towards the production of 1,3-butadiene from sustainable biomass resources.


Supervisor

Professor Søren Kegnæs

Co-supervisor

Senior Researcher Jerrik Mielby