Sustainable Graphite and Jet Fuel from Biorefinery Residue

Battery-grade graphite and aviation fuel are traditionally produced from non-renewable, fossil carbon feedstocks and result in substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Biomass holds exciting potential as a renewable and sustainable feedstock for the production of graphite and aviation fuel, but challenges exist including the necessity of a catalyst when producing graphite and low selectivity when producing aviation fuel. A process to convert a biomass-derived feedstock into graphite without the use of a catalyst and fuels with high selectivity towards sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is innovated. Heavy bio-oil undergoes a conversion process similar to the commercial production of synthetic graphite including coking at 500 °C, calcination at 1000 °C, and graphitization at 2800 °C. The resulting biographite exhibits excellent performance in lithium-ion battery configurations with specific capacity of ~330 mAh g^-1 and a 96.8 % capacity rebound after high rate cycling. The liquid hydrocarbon co-product from coking is suitable for hydrotreating into SAF. The aviation fuel fraction (70 wt % of the fuel produced) meets ASTM standards and is composed primarily of cycloalkanes (~80 wt %) which improves energy density compared to paraffins produced by other SAF pathways and may replace aromatics for elastomer swelling in traditional jet fuel with less soot production.