Investigation of a Renewable Biomass Source for Chemical Production

A rising interest in the scientific community is the development of an effective catalyst for a reaction known as deoxydehydration (DODH), which converts vicinal diols, obtained from biomass, into olefins. This reaction is of high interest because it plays a role in the development of renewable chemical products that will be essential in the fight against climate change. Currently, there are wide-spread research efforts surrounding this reaction, specifically, developing a sustainable and effective catalyst. The most promising results come from the use of high oxidation state rhenium catalysts which have produced olefin yields of well over 80%. Ammonium-based rhenium catalysts have especially shown higher catalytic activity than their counterparts. The reason for this occurrence has yet to be determined. This work goes in-depth on attempting to determine why ammonium ions seem to increase catalytic activity. There are three current theories on this phenomenon: 1) Ammonium ions help increase the solubility of the catalyst. 2) Ammonium acts as a reducing agent in the reduction of diol into an olefin. 3) Ammonium ions provide a counterion necessary for catalytic activation. Several laboratory-scale reactions, with different components and methods, are designed and performed to give insight and potential conclusions on these theories. By observing catalytic activity for each experiment, the three scenarios can be distinguished. These results will bring clarity to previously reported results and will advance understanding the mechanism. This can then lead to a commercially viable DODH catalyst which would enable replacing fossil feedstock-based processes with sustainable, biomass feedstock-based processes.