From Biomass to Fuels: Nano-catalytic Processes

Abstract

Fossil fuel consumption has generated many environmental problems such as air pollution as a result of environment carbon balance disarrangement through releasing petroleum carbon content. New energy resources can reduce consumption of petroleum and environment damages. Sun, wind, sea waves, and biomass are renewable energy resources that can produce power. Biomass can also supply chemical energy because of its carbon-rich structure. The structure makes biomass an ideal alternative energy resource for petroleum. It can be converted to fuels, fuel additives, and chemicals. Conversion of biomass to gaseous and liquid fuels such as hydrogen, biodiesel, alcohols, ethers, and aromatics is an interesting field for research and larger scales of production. The processes often are performed in the presence of heterogeneous catalysts. Metals such as Ru, Ni, Pt, Pd, and Cu are used for catalyzing biomass to fuel (BTF) processes. It has been demonstrated that decreasing metal particle sizes to nano-scale can increase the processes productivity and selectivity. Very high production yields of biofuels up to 100% can be available in the presence of nano-catalysts. In this chapter, BTF processes have been introduced, and performances for non-catalytic, catalytic, and nano-catalytic ones have been compared. Nano-catalytic preparation methods that were applied for BTF processes have been explained, and the use of nanotechnology for more productive and selective BTF processes has been concluded.