Surface functionalization of nanomaterials for energy and environment applications

In recent years, the biomass as a renewable feedstock has been gaining utmost importance in order to meet the global need for fuels and chemicals from sustainability perspectives [1,2]. Principal components of biomass are cellulosic and triglycerides derivatives. The triglyceride part is principally used to obtain biodiesel and liquid alkanes, as alternative fuels [3]. Biomass derived from the lignocellulose part is rich in carbohydrates and furan derivatives, and the presence of oxygen in their structure makes them suitable for further utilization to obtain added-value products. As concern the sustainability of the chemical processes, efforts are being made to turn them into "green" processes, working on the procedures (favorable reagent ratio, catalyst amount and green solvents) and exploiting heterogeneous catalysis. The use of solid catalyst is indeed very favorable from a sustainable point of view, due to its simple separation, regeneration and recycling of the material [4,5]. This implies a high efficiency of the catalysts accompanied by a decrease in the processing cost.This presentation will focus on different types of functionalized silica or titania based materials applied to the biomass exploitation, both to the synthesis of biodiesel and its additives and for the obtainment ofadded-value products such as GVL, diols or HMF. In particular, both organic (acid organic frameworks) and inorganic (Pd, Au, Ti) catalytic functions are being considered. Moreover, the surface and structural properties of the catalysts analyzed by several techniques, allowed to correlate their catalytic performances with their physical and chemical properties.