DREAM-BIO: Accelerated Discovery of new catalyst Materials for production of Bio-fuel

For this, the heterogeneous catalysts will have adequate acidity-basicity and metallic function to the envisaged biomass transformations. The current problem is that few catalysts are effective and stable under the reaction conditions which are usually hydrothermal (water under high temperatures and pressures). The project plans to study rare earth phosphates as a new family of acid-base catalysts.

These materials are known to be stable under such conditions, with a high potential for composition tuning, however they have never been studied for such an application to date. Another issue concerns the synthesis and evaluation of heterogeneous catalysts, often time-consuming. The heart of the project aims to overcome this limitation by implementing a combinatorial, high-throughput, and “machine learning” approach to obtain massive data that can be nevertheless easily exploitable. These data will concern the synthesis, modification, characterization and catalytic evaluation of these materials.

To achieve this objective, the project will be led by a consortium bringing together all the necessary skills. It will be managed by IRCELYON, a laboratory dedicated to catalysis, mainly heterogeneous, which will also perform the tasks of catalysis and characterization of acid-base properties in the liquid phase. The high-throughput experiments will be carried out by the Institut des Matériaux de Nantes (IMN) for the synthesis/modification of catalysts, and by the Unité de Catalyse et Chimie du Solide de Lille (UCCS) through the REALCAT platform for the characterization of acid-base and metallic properties in the gas phase. The analysis of the data to determine the property / catalytic efficiency / conditions relationships by “machine learning” will be carried out at the IMN. Finally, the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie Théoriques (LPCT) will carry out DFT screening of acid properties of the most promising phosphates on an atomistic scale. Through this project, the correlations identified between parameters and properties of these catalysts will be used to better understand the mechanisms involved during the transformation of biomass into bio-fuels and thus to direct research towards even more efficient catalysts for this application of industrial interest.