ARF03 - Direct Synthesis of 1,3-Propane Diol from Glycerol Using Transition Metal Based Ionic Hydrogenation Catalysts

| Alternative Renewable Fuels - Project Summaries 2004 |

Researcher:

Dr. Marcel Schlaf, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Guelph

Objectives:

1. Synthesis and characterization of various ligands and ruthenium catalysts employing these ligands.
   

2. Evaluation of these catalysts with the glycerol substrate in various solvents (sulfolane, NMP, water).
   

3. Optimization of promising catalysts leads as a function of reaction parameters (concentrations, temperature, hydrogen pressure etc.)

Expected Benefits:

If efficient catalysts and process engineering can be developed, this would mean that the cost of the starting material should be limited to its transportation and - if it at all necessary - purification potentially resulting in an economically very attractive process integration between biodiesel and 1,3-diol and/or propane production. It can be anticipated that such an integration would fundamentally improve the overall cost structure of biodiesel production leading to increased production volumes of biodiesel with subsequent increased demand for and hence market price of the seed oils used to produce it.

Summary of Research Results:

Research in the laboratory of Prof. Marcel Schlaf addresses fundamental questions of chemical reactivity that arise when trying to replace crude oil and natural gas as the carbon source for chemical building blocks with renewable sugar alcohols derived from corn, soybeans, sugar cane or other plant materials. Over the last 100 years the petrochemical industry has developed extremely efficient processes for the manufacture of a large variety of chemicals starting from underfunctionalized low oxygen content fossil carbon resources. These synthetic capabilities of the petrochemical industry are at the very core of our technologies and hence our civilization and survival and are represented by the left branch of the figure below. In contrast the chemical processes required to arrive at the same chemicals starting from overfunctionalized high oxygen content sugars are just starting to be investigated and to date only very few economically and ecologically viable processes represented by the right branch of the figure exist. The research conducted with the financial assistance of OMAFRA therefore seeks to develop new processes based on man-made transition metal catalysts that would allow a selective deoxygenation of sugar alcohols to chemicals that can be integrated into the existing petrochemical feedstreams ultimately enabling a shift to a more sustainable carbon resource.