The incorporation of nickel onto a commercial FCC catalyst and co‐feeding H2 into the reaction system improves the catalytic performance of rapeseed oil cracking, with respect to gasoline and light olefins (propene and butenes) production. On the other hand, the incorporation of platinum, with or without co‐feeding of H2, is detrimental to both the conversion and the selectivity. Thus, a judicious choice of metal is vital for performance during vegetable oil cracking.

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This project provides critical innovations and fundamental understandings that enable development of an economically-viable process for catalytic conversion of biomass (sugar) to 5hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). A low-cost ionic liquid (Cyphos 106) is discovered for fast conversion of fructose into HMF under moderate reaction conditions without any catalyst. HMF yield from fructose is almost 100% on the carbon molar basis. Adsorbent materials and adsorption process are invented and demonstrated for separation of 99% pure HMF product and recovery of the ionic liquid from the reaction mixtures. The adsorbent material appears very stable in repeated adsorption/regeneration cycles. Novel membrane-coated adsorbent particles are made and demonstrated to achieve excellent adsorption separation performances at low pressure drops. This is very important for a practical adsorption process because ionic liquids are known of high viscosity. Nearly 100% conversion (or dissolution) of cellulose in the catalytic ionic liquid into small molecules was observed. It is promising to produce HMF, sugars and other fermentable species directly from cellulose feedstock. However, several gaps were identified and could not be resolved in this project. Reaction and separation tests at larger scales are needed to minimize impacts of incidental errors on the mass balance and to show 99.9% ionic liquid recovery. The cellulose reaction tests were troubled with poor reproducibility. Further studies on cellulose conversion in ionic liquids under better controlled conditions are necessary to delineate reaction products, dissolution kinetics, effects of mass and heat transfer in the reactor on conversion, and separation of final reaction mixtures. v Summary This project built on earlier PNNL discoveries about catalytic conversion of sugars to HMF by using a soluble catalyst in an ionic liquid solvent (Zhao et al. 2007) and invention of adsorption separation technologies for recovery of HMF and ionic liquid from the reaction mixtures (Liu et al. 2011). The goal is to develop an economically-viable process for direct catalytic conversion of biomass to 5-HMF as a key intermediate and a flexible platform for producing chemicals and fuels. The current project effort focused on process innovations, identifying and addressing key technical barriers in reaction, separation, and feedstock areas for development of a practical ionic liquid-based catalytic process. The specific objectives laid out in the original proposal were (i) Develop a scalable, continuous flow reaction process using recycled ionic liquid; (ii) Develop a practical separation process to produce 99%-purity HMF, and 99.9% recovery of recycled ionic liquid; and (iii) Demonstrate the impact of different carbohydrates (fructose, glucose, mixed sugar, and cellulosic biomass) on HMF yield.