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Updated: Jul 19, 2025
Biomass Conversion to Produce Hydrocarbon Liquid Fuel Via Hot-vapor Filtered Fast Pyrolysis and Catalytic Hydrotreating
Published on: December 25, 2016
Hydroformylation of pyrolysis oils to aldehydes and alcohols from polyolefin waste
Houqian Li1, Jiayang Wu1, Zhen Jiang1
1Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Abstract:
Waste plastics are an abundant feedstock for the production of renewable chemicals. Pyrolysis of waste plastics produces pyrolysis oils with high concentrations of olefins (>50 weight %). The traditional petrochemical industry uses several energy-intensive steps to produce olefins from fossil feedstocks such as naphtha, natural gas, and crude oil. In this work, we demonstrate that pyrolysis oil can be used to produce aldehydes through hydroformylation, taking advantage of the olefin functionality. These aldehydes can then be reduced to mono- and dialcohols, oxidized to mono- and dicarboxylic acids, or aminated to mono- and diamines by using homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. This route produces high-value oxygenated chemicals from low-value postconsumer recycled polyethylene. We project that the chemicals produced by this route could lower greenhouse gas emissions ~60% compared with their production through petroleum feedstocks.
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