CAS: Catalytic funneling and upgrading of biomass-derived phenols and polyols

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Abu-Omar of the University of California, Santa Barbara is studying the development of catalysts for making renewable chemical feedstocks. Currently, the vast majority of chemical building blocks used to make polymers come from nonrenewable petroleum. Biomass is the most abundant renewable carbon source and offers a potential alternative to petroleum for producing feedstock chemicals. A current barrier to using biomass as a renewable source for industrially relevant monomers is that the deconstruction of biomass leads to mixtures of molecules, which require high energy input for separation and further transformation. Professor Abu-Omar and his research team are designing metal oxide catalysts and investigating their reaction chemistries on the molecular level with biomass-derived chemicals to better understand and improve the selectivity of these processes for selectively providing important monomers. Synergistically, a freshman-level undergraduate chemistry course is being developed called "Sustainability by the Numbers" and is focused on providing students from a broad range of disciplines with the analytical skills to evaluate the sustainability of choices made in daily life using a combination of chemistry and a systems level approach. New catalysts are needed to improve reactivity and control selectivity in the hydrodeoxygenation and dehydration of biomass-derived molecules. Professor Abu-Omar and his research group are addressing this problem by combining transition metal sites with controlled acidic sites on metal oxides to tailor product selectivity. Specifically, the deposition of well-defined platinum nanoparticles on tungsten oxide is being used to evaluate structure-function relationships that effect selectivity in these systems and sulfated zirconia-catalyzed conversion of sorbitol to isosorbide is being interrogated to better understand the mechanism of the process and further optimize reactivity. Experimental approaches common to both projects are the study of structure-function relationships through kinetic studies of reaction mechanisms, isotope labeling experiments, and establishing free energy relationships. These activities are also simultaneously providing graduate student training in multidisciplinary fields of chemistry spanning synthesis, catalysis, chemical kinetics, and green chemistry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.