2018 Volume 44 Issue 4 Pages 278-283
Biomass resources have attracted attention because they are renewable and can be converted into feedstock for producing valuable chemicals such as olefins and aromatics. The present study proposes a two-step operation for producing bio-oils or chemicals from biomass to improve the quality of product and catalyst life. The first step is fermentative production of oxygen-containing compounds such as butyric acid from molasses as biomass. In the second step, the product is converted catalytically to propylene. The feasibility of the two-step process depends on the fermentation step. To realize the efficient acid fermentation, conditions were studied for producing butyric acid in high selectivity in a short period. Under our optimized conditions, selectivity was improved from 25.4 to 73.5 C% and the fermentation period was shortened from 13.5 to 1.5 d. Catalytic conversion of the fermentation product over zeolite gave a propylene yield of 25 C%. The results clearly show feasibility of the two-step processes for propylene production from molasses.