VOLUME 17, NUMBER 4

JULY/AUGUST 2003

Copyright 2003 American Chemical Society

Special Section: High-Quality Transportation Fuels

High-Quality Transportation Fuels
Muneyoshi Yamada*
Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 07 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan Received June 3, 2003 This special section is an output of the research project titled Synthesis of Ecological High-Quality Transportation Fuels, which has been promoted by a Research Promotion Committee in the Research for the Future Program of JSPS from fiscal years 1998 to 2002. The project aims to develop new-generation catalysts to ensure a compact productive process producing highquality and environmentally benign diesel fuels (FischerTropsch oil and dimethyl ether) from distributed untapped non-oil hydrocarbon resources (natural gas from dispersed remote gas fields, coal bed methane, and biomass) via syngas. This will lead to the contribution to the achievement of both COP3 and the new long-term regulation for automobile exhaust gases. Since COP3, it is needless to say that the highly efficient use of energy must also be of low environmental impact. From this point of view, the diesel engine has a serious problem, because its exhaust gas accounts for 75% of the automobile-origin NOx and almost 100% of the automobile-origin PM, although its thermal efficiency is higher than that of the gasoline engine. An important solution to this problem has appeared from synthetic fuels such as Fischer-Tropsch oil (FT-oil) and dimethyl ether (DME). That is, it has recently become known that the tail gas from the combustion of DME or FT-oil in diesel engines contains much less PM and NOx than that from the combustion of ultra-clean diesel fuel from petroleum. Therefore, by using DME or FT-oil instead of gas-oil as diesel fuel, the simultaneous reduction of CO2, NOx, PM,
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel. +81 (22) 217 7214. Fax. +81 (22) 217 7293. E-mail: yamada@erec.che.tohoku.ac.jp.

and SOx is expected. Considering these new findings and the expectations, we have planned the following measures. (I) Catalytic formation of syngas from biomass. Syngas production from distributed untapped nonpetroleum hydrocarbon resources such as small-scale natural gas fields, coal bed methane, and biomass is very important in this research project. Especially, biomass conversion to syngas is very important from a so-called the Carbon Neutral point of view. This project aims to develop a new catalytic system to convert biomass to syngas. (II) FT synthesis. The project aims to improve both the catalytic activity and so-called Anderson-Schulz-Flory distribution for efficient production of diesel fuel. For this purpose, newly found mesoporous materials such as MCM41 and SBA15 were used as supports for Co catalysts. (III) Methanol and DME synthesis. The project aims to develop a new catalytic system to produce methanol at a lower temperature, because lower temperatures are preferred from an equilibrium point of view. The project also aims to develop a single-step process from syngas to DME with a hybrid catalyst of methanol synthesis catalysts and solid acid catalysts. (IV) Development of sulfur-tolerant catalysts to simplify or omit the desulfurization unit. Sulfur compounds in syngas must be removed to less than ppm to prevent the sulfur-poisoning of catalysts in commercial processes. The project aims to elucidate the

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mechanism of sulfur poisoning and to develop sulfurtolerant catalysts. (V) Estimation and designing of an active catalyst by using computational chemistry. For efficient research, we have adopted an innovative molecular design technology, which combines combinatorial computational chemistry and a new accelerated quantum chemical molecular dynamics algorithm. This method has been applied to methanol and FischerTropsch syntheses. (VI) In-situ observation of catalyst fine structure with EXAFS, FT-IR, etc., and elucidation of surface chemistry on the basis of the observation. (VII) LCA analyses for synthetic fuels and clean-energy cars. Our project not only to produce very important fruits as ecological high-quality transportation fuels, but also to bring large spin-off benefits to the chemical industry and basic catalyst and surface chemistry ended in March. Elemental technologies of the project have possibilities

for extensive development and flexibly deal with various energy demands in future. Since the process can treat various kinds of carbon resources, it is applicable in a hydrogen energy society and in a society ensuring sustainable development with biomass. This special section reports some of the typical results of the project. In closing, on behalf of the research project team, I would like to express our thanks to the Research Promotion Committee of JSPS and to Emeritus Professor Yoshikazu Nishikawa (the Chairman of the Committee and the Director of the Osaka Institute of Technology) for their promotion of our research project. I am grateful to Professor Kaoru Fujimoto (The University of Kitakyusyu) for his encouragement of our research project in his role as advisor. I am also grateful to Emeritus Professor Yuzo Sanada and to Professor Masakatsu Nomura for their support of our project as commentators. Finally, I am thankful to Professor Yasuo Ohtsuka for his making every effort to publish this special section.
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