Catalytic Production of Hydrocarbon from Biomass

Conversion of biomass into useful fungible chemicals and fuels is a long-standing challenge. A key requirement of such processes is high efficiency of conversion for economic viability. Biomass derived sugars are highly oxygenated and need processing to remove to be converted into useful hydrocarbons.We propose an integrated bio-thermochemical platform for production of a specialty chemical, which can be used for the production of performance polymers as well as directly blended into existing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel upon simple and cheap chemical transformation. The key component propose to be developed under this grant envisages further development of the microbe, catalysis process, and fermentation scale up.Upon full development, our process can produce the same chemical at half the current market price from renewable sources.