ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the advances in catalytic systems for biomass conversion to fuels and chemicals, explored for improving reactant conversions and product selectivities, while relying on the performance of typical catalytic reactions, example dehydration, hydrogenation, aldol condensation, and hydrogenolysis. It focuses on catalysis-based strategies for conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels. Establishing an efficient biorefinery will require many innovations in the life cycle of growing crops up to their final chemical conversion to fuels and chemicals, such as crop optimization through bioengineering, pretreatment of biomass, and selective and energy-efficient conversion of biomass-derived platform molecules to fuels and chemicals. While many branches of science will be involved in establishing efficient biorefineries, catalysis, like in petroleum refining, will be at the heart of developing new technologies for fuel and chemical production. Establishing energy-efficient and cost-competitive biorefineries requires getting the most value out of the three portions of lignocellulosic feeds: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.
