Abstract
Concerns about depleting fossil fuels and global warming effects are pushing our society to search for new renewable sources of energy with the potential to substitute coal, natural gas, and petroleum. In this sense, biomass, the only renewable source of carbon available on Earth, is the perfect replacement for petroleum in producing renewable fuels. The aviation sector is responsible for a significant fraction of greenhouse gas emissions, and two billion barrels of petroleum are being consumed annually to produce the jet fuels required to transport people and goods around the world. Governments are pushing directives to replace fossil fuel-derived jet fuels with those derived from biomass. The present mini review is aimed to summarize the main technologies available today for converting biomass into liquid hydrocarbon fuels with a molecular weight and structure suitable for being used as aviation fuels. Particular emphasis will be placed on those routes involving heterogeneous catalysts.
Highlights
Fossil fuels supply most of the energy consumed worldwide.According to recent data from the U.S Energy Information Administration [1], 80% of the energy consumed worldwide in 2018 was obtained from fossil fuels, and this share is expected to decrease only slightly (70%) by 2050
It is imperative to develop technologies allowing for the transformation of biomass into liquid hydrocarbon fuels chemically identical to those currently used in the aviation sector
The gas to jet fuelsmolecules (GTJ) fuel has been ASTM certified for commercial use blended with petroleum-derived jet fuel up to 50% [71] The lack of aromatics in the jet fuel is the main limitation to increasing the concentration of renewable jet fuel in these blends
Summary
Fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal) supply most of the energy consumed worldwide. With the aim to reduce the dependence of the aviation sector on petroleum and mitigate the associated greenhouse gas emissions, governments are issuing directives to promote the use of jet fuels produced from biomass (i.e., biojet fuels). In this sense, the European Commission, through the “European Advanced Biofuels. In 2011, the U.S Department of Agriculture and the U.S Department of Energy agreed to invest more than 500 million dollars to produce drop-in aviation fuels for military and commercial applications [8] To achieve these goals, it is imperative to develop technologies allowing for the transformation of biomass into liquid hydrocarbon fuels chemically identical to those currently used in the aviation sector. Particular emphasis will be placed on those technologies involving catalytic processes
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