Heuristics To Guide the Development of Sustainable, Biomass-Derived, Platform Chemical Derivatives

Hundreds of catalytic routes to upgrade biomass-derived platform chemicals have been proposed. In this study, we developed process selection and development heuristics for these catalytic transformations from techno-economic analysis of catalytically upgrading furfural (a potential platform chemical) to eight derivatives that vary in chemical functionality and process complexity. These heuristics included simple cost equations based on catalyst performance as well as process complexity to predict the minimum selling price of platform chemical derivatives. Additionally, design rules were developed to guide the development of catalytic technologies for upgrading platform chemicals. The conversion of platform chemicals to hydrocarbons must be avoided. For commercial relevance, attaining catalyst yield of 60% and weight hourly space velocity of at least on the order of 0.1 h–1 are necessary. Precious metal catalysts, such as Pt, cannot be used if the desired platform chemical derivative is priced below 1.00 (...