Production of jet and diesel biofuels from renewable lignocellulosic biomass

Abstract

Abstract The continual growth in commercial aviation fuels and more strict environmental legislations have led to immense interest in developing green aviation fuels from renewable lignocellulosic biomass. This work demonstrated a novel transformation of biomass into bio-jet and diesel fuels. The transformation included following three reaction steps: (i) the catalytic pyrolysis of sawdust into low-carbon aromatics, (ii) the production of C8–C15 aromatics by the aromatic alkylation and (iii) the production of C8–C15 cyclic alkanes by the hydrogenation of C8–C15 aromatics. The production of the desired C8–C15 aromatics with the highest selectivity of 92.4% was achieved by the low temperature alkylation reactions of the low carbon aromatics using the ionic liquid of [bmim]Cl–2AlCl 3 (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloroaluminate). The biofuels derived from sawdust basically met the main specifications of jet fuels. This transformation potentially provides a useful avenue for the development of green aviation biofuels utilizing lignocellulose biomass.