Renewable Chemical Commodity Feedstocks from Integrated Catalytic Processing of Pyrolysis Oils

A Little Help from Hydrogen Biomass may one day displace petroleum as the chemical industry's primary feedstock. Currently, though, the primary hurdle for incorporating plant-derived material into existing process feeds is the high proportion of oxygen in its molecular frameworks. Rapid heating of the biomass followed by high-temperature treatment with zeolite catalysts can yield tractable quantities of useful commodity compounds such as ethylene and benzene, but much of the carbon is wasted in the process—diverted either toward gaseous CO and CO 2 , or solid coke. Vispute et al. (p. 1222 ) show that an intermediate step, in which hydrogen is catalytically incorporated into the heated material prior to zeolite treatment, can substantially raise the yield of useful products by reducing susceptibility to coking.