Objective
Biomass conversion is of high priority for sustainable fuel production, to reduce the reliance of Europe on fossil fuel production and to provide environmentally friendly energy. Aqueous phase reforming (APR) is one of the most promising, competitive ways for the production of liquid and gaseous fuels from biomass, since it is low energy consuming. APR enables processing of wet biomass resources without energy intensive drying and additional hydrogen production from water by the water-gas-shift reaction. Hence, APR is one of the processes that allow fast industrialization of conversion systems suited for wet biomass resources. Catalysis is here the key technology. State-of-the-art catalysts used are a) not optimized and b) can lack hydrothermal stability. Regarding the latter, the paradigm shifts towards carbon supported catalysts, due to its superior hydrothermal stability. Within the project experts for multinational industry, SMEs and academia focus on the optimization of hydrothermally stable carbon supported catalysts for the APR to unleash the potential of catalysts. Methodology employed is not a trial and error optimization. By deduction of fundamental structure-property relationships from highly defined model catalysts a catalyst design capability is build up. This capability will be used for optimization with the objectives to increase catalyst activity, selectivity and hydrothermal stability. Cost efficient routes to produce these catalysts in a technical scale will be evaluated and a demonstration catalysts synthesized and operated in long term tests with technical feedstocks and at a competitive price.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-NMP-2012-SMALL-6
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Funding Scheme
CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research projectCoordinator
64289 Darmstadt
Germany