New Catalysts Convert Ethanol to Butanol

A UK research team reported the discovery of a new family of catalysts that enables highly selective conversion of ethanol into n-butanol – a more energy efficient alternative fuel for transportation.

Butanol has emerged as an advanced alternative fuel that can replace ethanol in gasoline blends because of its higher energy content and hence better fuel mileage. Recent research efforts have focused on exploring biosynthetic pathways for butanol production but these are hampered by very low conversion rates. Researchers are currently looking into catalytic processes that can upgrade more readily available ethanol to butanol. Catalysts speed up the chemical conversion by lowering the energy required to jumpstart reactions. Many ethanol producers eagerly look forward to these catalytic conversion technologies because these would require less retrofitting to produce butanol. Catalytic processes, however, are challenged by modest selectivity in most cases.

In line with this fundamental advance, University of Bristol (UK) researchers have developed homogeneous ruthenium diphosphine catalysts for upgrading ethanol to butanol, as reported at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Preliminary analysis suggests that these new catalysts are better than previously used catalysts since it has selectivity to n-butanol, reaching more than 95 percent conversion. The new catalysts could reduce the cost of converting conventional ethanol plants for butanol production. With the new catalysts, the ethanol produced by conventional method could simply be upgraded to butanol with an additional reaction step.