Re-Engineering the Integrated Biorefinery: A Materials Approach to in Situ Biofuel Upgrading

While thermochemical conversions are a promising route to obtain biofuels from biomass, they yield acidic, unstable, viscous bio-oils. Though these bio-oils can be upgraded, current methods suffer from catalyst poisoning and high materials and operation costs. Our approach to the integrated biorefinery incorporates inorganic compounds into cellulosic feedstocks to simultaneously engineer either high-value nanomaterials via biotemplating or heterogeneous adsorbents, while upgrading biofuels in a single step, reducing the need for costly downstream upgrading. For example, agricultural wastes impregnated with silver nitrate yield less acidic pyrolysis liquids higher in desirable furfurals, pyrolysis gases enriched in ethane, methane and hydrogen, and silver mesh nanoribbons that could be incorporated into membranes for further catalytic upgrading. Impregnated biomasses shows faster volatilization rates at lower temperatures versus raw biomass, suggesting that we can upgrade pyrolysis biofuels in situ at lower temperatures, improving the economic viability of sustainable biomass to renewable fuel conversions.