KSEF:R&D Excellence: Mild Solvent Extraction of Wood Waste to Produce Value-Added Materials

Grants and Contracts Details

Description

The thermochemical conversion of agricultural and forestry biomass into value-added chemicals and materials holds great promise for improving industrial sustainability and increasing markets available for US crop producers. The proposed project wiH investigate the conversion of wood waste to value-added materials by mild solvent extraction (MSE). MSE is an extractive process which utilizes a heavy solvent to directly convert biomass to liquid products, gases, and solid chars without the need for hydrogen overpressure or catalysis at conditions which favor the fonnation of heavy products such as pitch. MSE is proven to be a viable route for the conversion of coal into chemicals and materials. The extension of this Imv cost process to the conversion of biomass, although offering new challenges, is a logical choice for reducing domestic dependence on foreign petroleum crude, creating new "green", carbon neutral processes for producing chemicals and materials that are currently being produced iTom fossil sources, and expanding the market for biomass to increase farm income. Biomass is heterogeneous in elemental composition and may have high moisture content. The use ofMSE is expected to capitalize on these factors, specifically targeting the production of heavy liquids (pitches), chemical. feedstocks (phenols, cresols, and oxygenates), and carbon materials. Other thermochemical processes are either economically challenged due to the need for high pressure hydrogenation and catalysis (direct liquefaction, solvolysis) or unsuited for the production of heavy liquid products due to operating conditions which primarily favor thermal cracking and the formation oflight oils and gases (pyrolysis, indirect liquefaction).
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date7/1/036/30/04

Funding

  • KY Science and Technology Co Inc: $15,000.00

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