Accelerating Catalyst Development for Biofuel Production through Multiscale Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis of Biomass over Mo2C

Advanced catalytic materials play an enabling role in producing renewable fuels and chemicals from biomass, thereby helping meet the global climate-change goals set forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Herein, we present a multiscale approach to accelerate the catalyst-process development cycle for catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) of biomass over Mo₂C. Mo₂C has been shown to possess co-localized acidic and metallic sites and exhibit high activity for deoxygenation of biomass pyrolysis model compounds. However, critical knowledge gaps remain regarding the effectiveness of this catalyst for CFP of whole biomass. We address these knowledge gaps and demonstrate that Mo₂C is effective at deoxygenating biomass-pyrolysis products in the presence of H₂ but that it undergoes rapid selective and non-selective deactivation. The knowledge gaps addressed from this integrated study, targeting appropriate experiments across scales and feed types, enabled identification of critical modifications for advancing the CFP catalyst-process development cycle.