Graphitic carbon nitrides as acid solid catalysts applied to biomass conversion

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges of the world in the 21st century is to get independence from oil as an energy source and feedstock for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. A key technology to reach these objectives is the development of an efficient and highly integrated biorefinery process. The efficiency and feasibility of such a process is highly dependent on the activity of the catalysts employed in the process. Among the typically employed catalysts, certainly, acid catalysts (e.g. zeolites) are the most relevant, once most of the reactions present in the biomass conversion are dehydration reactions. Therefore, it of paramount importance to investigate and find new acid catalysts analogous to zeolites, which can in the future overcome this class of material, in terms of efficiency and costs. In this project, we aim to employ a similar approach that is used in the activation zeolites, to produce a zeolite-like acid catalyst based on graphitic carbon nitrides (H+-PHI/PTI). These modified materials have the potential to be further employed in metal-free biomass conversion reactions to produce value-added chemicals. We plan to investigate the acid properties of the obtained materials firstly in model reactions (e.g. ester hydrolysis) and then in biomass conversion reactions aiming to obtain platform molecules and value-added chemicals. (AU)