Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Ballroom A+B (Camino Real Hotel)
A collaboration project between Chemistry and Agriculture Departments at Texas A&M U.-Commerce is underway to take the advantage of unique production strength of oilseed crops at East Texas. The Chemistry team focuses on the development of the starch-based heterogeneous catalysts based on the report by Lou et al. (Bioresources Technol. 2008). The investigation includes studying the effects of calcination, sulfonation and plasma treatments on catalysts to optimize the surface properties, especially the acidity distribution, for the bio-oil to bio-diesel reaction. The acid/base distribution, surface area and pore size distribution of starch-based catalyst materials will be reported as function of temperature and time of calcination and sulfonation procedures. In addition, non-thermal RF plasma treatments, including O2, H2 and H2O plasmas, will be investigated to modify the distribution of acid/base sites before and after the sulfonation procedure. Esterification of oleic acid with methanol will be used as the model reaction for the conversion of bio-oil to fuels.