Contacts:
Supervisors:
Dott.ssa Claudia Antonetti
Title:
Novel exploitation of the carbonaceous hydrochar deriving from the hydrothermal conversion of biomass to levulinic acid
Abstract:
The massive consumption of unsustainable fossil resources has boosted research on renewable feedstocks. Nowadays, biomasses are promising and still underexploited starting material sto produce many chemicals and biomass through different conversion technologies. Among them the acidic hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) allows the selective conversion of the solubilized sugars C5/C6 (deriving from emicellulose and cellulose fraction respectively) into furans and organic acids, depending on the reaction conditions and a carbon-rich, hydrophilic solid, named “hydrochar”, precipitates. From this new perspective, the acid-catalysed conversion of cellulose gives levulinic acid (LA), a very added-value “platform chemical”. The optimization of LA synthesis has been largely studied for different kinds of biomasses, including dedicated energy crops and the main by-product of the process is the hydrochar. This innovative PhD project deals with the investigation of novel exploitation possibilities of the hydrochar, recovered after LA production from different feedstocks, adding significant economic value to the LA process, thus smartly completing the Biorefinery cycle of the adopted biomass.
Publications:
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Oral communications at congress:
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Poster communications at congress:
Sustainable catalytic valorization of fructose-derived HMF to 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)furan and 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)tetrahydrofuran”,
Claudia Antonetti, Sara Fulignati, Domenico Licursi, Matteo Pieraccioni, Anna Maria Raspolli Galletti, EUROPACAT Congress, Florence, 2017.
