A Novel Acid Catalyst for Conversion of Ethanol to Butanol

The extensive consumption of fossil fuels contributes to a long-term threat to the ecosystem on which people highly depend. . Accordingly, people are increasingly interested in developing biorenewable fuels, among them is N-butanol. Due to its desired noncorrosivity, immiscibility with water, and relatively high energy density, preparing N-butanol has gained increasing attention. The major common challenge of the recently reported N-butanol production technologies lies in their low N-butanol selectivity. The novel acid catalyst (instead of base catalysts used in literature) developed in this work has achieved the highest selectivity to date. The effects of different factors on N-butanol selectivity and yield are evaluated. In addition, the associated reaction mechanism is understood with various material and process characterization methods.