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Updated: Jun 16, 2026

Biomass Conversion to Produce Hydrocarbon Liquid Fuel Via Hot-vapor Filtered Fast Pyrolysis and Catalytic Hydrotreating
Published on: December 25, 2016
Synthesis of jet-fuel-range high-density monocyclic hydrocarbons from biomass-derived furfural via cyclopentanone
Wuyu Wang1, Zihan Liu1, Chenyu Duan1
1Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Process Measurement and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096, PR China.
Abstract:
Developing renewable jet-fuel-range fuel components from lignocellulosic biomass is of considerable interest for jet-fuel formulations. Herein, an integrated catalytic route was developed for upgrading biomass-derived furfural into jet-fuel-range high-density monocyclic hydrocarbons via furfural-to-cyclopentanone (CPO) conversion, solvent-free aldol condensation, and hydrodeoxygenation (HDO). In the first step, Cu-Ni/SBA-15 catalysts were evaluated for the aqueous-phase conversion of furfural to CPO, and Cu1Ni1/SBA-15 exhibited the best performance, affording a CPO carbon yield of 71.1%. In the second step, Na-modified NiAlO mixed oxides were employed as solid-base catalysts for the solvent-free aldol condensation of CPO with furfural, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, and 5-methylfurfural. Among them, 4.6%Na-NiAlO gave the highest activity for the CPO/furfural system, achieving 99.9% furfural conversion and a total furfural-carbon yield of 99.4% toward condensation intermediates. Subsequent HDO of these oxygenates over Pd/C and HZSM-5 afforded C10-C17 monocyclic hydrocarbons. For the CPO/furfural route, the total liquid-hydrocarbon carbon yield reached 85.3%, with C15 monocyclic alkanes as the dominant products. The resulting hydrocarbons exhibited relatively high densities of 0.83-0.84 g cm-3, net heating values of 41.32-42.77 MJ kg-1, highlighting their potential as high-density jet-fuel-range components. A simplified mass-balance analysis further indicated that 1 t of dry straw could theoretically yield approximately 0.13 t of such components through the proposed route. This work demonstrates a concise and modular strategy for converting hemicellulose-derived furfural into jet-fuel-range monocyclic hydrocarbons and provides a promising approach for biomass-based fuel upgrading.
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