Abstract
Direct catalytic conversion of ethanol to hydrocarbon blend-stock can increase biofuels use in current vehicles beyond the ethanol blend-wall of 10-15%. Literature reports describe quantitative conversion of ethanol over zeolite catalysts but high C 2 hydrocarbon formation renders this approach unsuitable for commercialization. Furthermore, the prior mechanistic studies suggested that ethanol conversion involves endothermic dehydration step. Here, we report the complete conversion of ethanol to hydrocarbons over InV-ZSM-5 without added hydrogen and which produces lower C 2 (<13%) as compared to that over H-ZSM-5. Experiments with C 2 H 5 OD and in situ DRIFT suggest that most of the products come from the hydrocarbon pool type mechanism and dehydration step is not necessary. Thus, our method of direct conversion of ethanol offers a pathway to produce suitable hydrocarbon blend-stock that may be blended at a refinery to produce fuels such as gasoline, diesel, JP-8, and jet fuel, or produce commodity chemicals such as BTX.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 16039 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 3 2015 |
Funding
This research is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, BioEnergy Technologies Office under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Initial funds were from the ORNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development funds and from the BioEnergy Science Center which is supported by the U.S. DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the Office of Science. The DRIFTS work was performed at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is sponsored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and U.S. Department of Energy. We thank Dr. Zili Wu for help with DRIFTS experiments and Mr. Andrew Lepore for assistance with some of the experimental work. Authors thank Drs. Jagjit Nanda and Rose Ruther for recording Raman spectra of zeolites.