Biomass-derived Platform Molecules Upgrading through Catalytic Processes: Yielding Chemicals and Fuels

Biomass valorization is a booming field. Especially, the valorization of platform molecules by catalytic processes has driven a large interest in the recent years, and many groups are actively working on the transformation of biosourced substrates to a variety of upgraded chemicals. In this context, in the present paper we put in perspectives the scientific works of our research team. We first classified catalytic transformations of industrial interest according to the number of carbons of the starting material, from Cl to C6. They involve, among others, acid catalysts (e.g., for glycerol dehydration), redox catalysts (e.g., for 5-HMF conversion to diformylfuran), acid and redox catalysts (e.g., for direct acetalization of alcohols), or complex multifunctional catalysts, especially for the Guerbet reaction. Further, we also developed what we called 'toolboxes,' which are general concepts or technologies with a broader field of applications. For example, we adapted the two zones fluidized bed reactor (TZFBR) concept to the single reactor continuous regeneration of coking catalysts. Further, we designed a completely new high throughput platform enabling synthetizing, characterizing and testing the performances of many catalysts for considerably accelerating the catalysts discovery/optimization loop.