Location: Renewable Product Technology Research
Project Number: 5010-30600-003-002-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2025
End Date: Aug 31, 2026
Objective:
ARS Objective: Evaluation of regenerative treatment conditions and the effects of such on the recovered activity and selectivity of heterogeneous dehydration catalysts.
Cooperator Objective: Develop upstream feed purification and downstream product recovery methods for lactic acid/lactate-to-acyrilic acid/acrylate process.
Approach:
ARS researchers will construct a bench scale flow reactor for performing regenerative studies of catalysts which are selective for the vapor phase dehydration of lactic acid/lactate esters. Cooperator will provide ARS researchers with a series of dehydration catalysts which will be aged using a standard reaction protocol. ARS researchers will screen parameters for oxidative regeneration of the catalysts (e.g., temperature, O2 partial pressure) to determine the regeneration procedure that yields the highest recovered activity and selectivity.
Cooperator, at their facility, will work to improve methods used to produce lactic acid/lactate ester feedstocks used in the dehydration reactor and for recovering the acrylic acid/acrylate product from the reactor effluent.