On the role of Zr to facilitate the synthesis of diesel and jet fuel range intermediates from biomass-derived carbonyl compounds over aluminum phosphate

Heterogeneous zeolite/zeotype catalysts are attractive for converting renewable biomass-derived chemicals into transportation fuels by aldol condensation reactions, which provide a simple strategy to improve carbon numbers. Herein, Zr-doped aluminum phosphate (ZrAPO-5) were applied for efficient syntheses of diesel and jet fuel range C11, C12 and C16 intermediates from biomass-derived furfural (FF) and cyclohexanone (CH). Incor-poration of Zr in the APO-5 framework facilitated the adsorption of the C--O groups of FF and CH and created more and stronger acid and base sites, which co-catalyzed the aldol condensation and facilitated the product yields. ZrAPO-5 (Zr/Al = 0.20) yielded up to 79.3% single aldol condensation product C11 or 80.7% double aldol condensation product C16 in the cross-aldol condensation of FF and CH under appropriate reaction conditions, and also realized 83.3% C12 yield in the self-aldol condensation of CH. In addition, the catalytic system displayed good to excellent yields of other value-added chemicals in aldol condensations of alternative carbonyl compounds.

Automated summary

In this study, Zr-doped aluminum phosphate catalyst was used to synthesize intermediates for diesel and jet fuel. The addition of Zr increased the acidity and basicity of the catalyst, resulting in higher yields of the desired products.