Liquid‐Phase Catalytic Processing of Biomass‐Derived Oxygenated Hydrocarbons to Fuels and Chemicals

Biomass has the potential to serve as a sustainable source of energy and organic carbon for our industrialized society. The focus of this Review is to present an overview of chemical catalytic transformations of biomass-derived oxygenated feedstocks (primarily sugars and sugar-alcohols) in the liquid phase to value-added chemicals and fuels, with specific examples emphasizing the development of catalytic processes based on an understanding of the fundamental reaction chemistry. The key reactions involved in the processing of biomass are hydrolysis, dehydration, isomerization, aldol condensation, reforming, hydrogenation, and oxidation. Further, it is discussed how ideas based on fundamental chemical and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• UD
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
• DF
  Directorate for Engineering
• BE
  Basic Energy Sciences