With the efforts of all group memebers, and our distinguished cooperators, Zhensheng's 2nd work regarding "MgAl-LDH/LDO catalyzed hydrothermal deoxygenation of microalgae for low-oxygen biofuel production" is accepted in ACS ES&T Engineering.
High oxygen content of microalgae-derived bio-oil limits their direct use in modern motors. In this study, instead of noble metal catalyzed two step hydrodeoxygenation, MgAl layered double hydroxides/oxides (MgAl-LDH/LDO) with tunable acidic and basic properties, are developed for catalyzing the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae to obtain bio-oil with low oxygen content. The results show that both MgAl-LDH3 and MgAl-LDO3 enhance the low O/C bio-oil production through catalyzing both the hydrolysis of cellular compounds and the decarboxylation, decarbonylation of biocrude during HTL of microalgae. MgAl-LDH3 with more acidic sites are more effective to catalyze the hydrolysis of cellular compounds than MgAl-LDO3 according to the relative increases of 12.98% and 9.72% of biocrude yields, respectively. However, MgAl-LDO3 with more basic sites is more efficient in catalyzing the decarboxylation, decarbonylation and amidation of fatty acids to form hydrocarbons, esters, alcohols, and amides, which contributes to 22.6% decrease of O/C and 28.4% increase of N/C in the bio-oil product, respectively.
This work reveals that MgAl-LDHx and MgAl-LDOx are efficient to catalyze not only the hydrolysis of cellular compounds but also the deoxidation of the reaction intermediates to produce low O-containing bio-oil, which might pave the way of their direct use in modern motors.
Congrats again to Zhensheng Shen!
