Journal of Chemical Engineering & Process Technology
Open Access

Highly selective production of formic acid from complex, water-insoluble biomass using a homogeneous polyoxometalate catalyst

3^rd International Conference on Chemical Engineering

October 02-04, 2017 Chicago, USA

Jakob Albert

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-N�?¼rnberg, Germany

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Chem Eng Process Technol

Abstract :

Growing concerns about global warming (related to increasing CO2 emissions) are pushing the developed countries to consider the production of chemicals and energy in a more efficient and sustainable way. In this context, the substitution of fossil raw materials by biorenewables is of particular interest. A promising approach to replace a certain part of fossil fuel combustion is the energetic use of biomass. Furthermore, catalytic oxidation chemistry of biomass is a growing field of research. The main effort is to overcome the recalcitrant nature of the feedstock by acid-catalyzed depolymerization followed by oxidative cleavage of the carbon bonds in the biomolecule. Since 2011, our group is active in exploring an alternative way to convert biomass into energy molecules. In detail, we are reporting the highly selective oxidation of a broad range of complex biomasses to formic acid (FA) using oxygen as oxidant and polyoxometalate (POM) complexes as homogeneous catalyst. The concept of oxidative conversion of complex biomass to formic acid (OxFA-process) using homogeneous catalysis can be described as a â�?�?cold and wet combustionâ�? which is restricted to a reaction temperature of 90�?°C as higher temperatures would lead to a thermal decomposition of FA to CO and water. The generated FA can be separated from the aqueous reaction mixture by simple liquid/liquid extraction. Besides the mild reaction conditions and the very broad range of useable biogenic substrates, the here described method has the advantage that all thermally induced sidereactions forming gluey or solid by-products are completely surpressed under the applied oxidative conditions. Moreover, the formed FA is not oxidized further to CO2 while all carbon from the biomass ends up as either FA or carbon dioxide.