UC Berkeley

In the late 1850s, Charles Friedel's dry distillation of calcium acetate gave the world a novel route to the commercial production of acetone, a process that would later be referred to as decarboxylative dehydration (ketonization). While the subsequent development of the petrochemical industry made this route to acetone uncompetitive, today there is considerable interest in ketonization as means for converting biomass-derived fatty acids to produce longer-chained ketones, which could serve as precursors to fuels and lubricants. However, the lack of strategies beyond direct hydrogenation of the ketones into hydrocarbons has limited the practical application of ketonization for producing biofuels. We describe here integrated catalytic sequences for converting a range of biomass-derived carboxylic acids, sourced through fermentation of sugars, hydrolysis of lipids, or biomass pyrolysis, to compounds that are fully compatible with the existing energy infrastructure and require minimal hydrogen input.