Status: Published (2022). Characterization and scale-up phase

With Wake Forest University, we have been developing a carbon catalyst made from simple sugars using green chemistry processes. It converts waste fatty acids directly into biodiesel at low temperature in a continuous-flow reactor. In testing, the catalyst reached better than 90% conversion at 100 °C with an 11-minute residence time. It ran continuously for 4.5 days with no significant loss in performance.

The work was presented at SERMACS 2020, AIChE 2020, and the 6th Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Materials and Renewable Energies (2022). It was published in ChemistrySelect (2022, doi:10.1002/slct.202200287).