Bio-oils from Biomass and Wastes
Another project focuses on bio-oil production from biomass and wastes, and the synthesis of carbon-based acid catalysts for biodiesel conversion using oleic acid esterification with methanol as the probe reaction.
For bio-oil production, biomass or wastes will go through hydrothermal liquefaction processes followed by separation, identification and quantification to characterize the content and composition of the bio-oil. The schematic diagram could be describe as the figure below. For carbon based acid catalysts, the tasks would be focusing on using starch related materials to prepare catalysts with high density of acid sites via partial carbonization in N2 followed by sulfonation.
