Study of vanadium containing catalysts for the upgrading of bio-based building blocks

In the last years, due to the continuous decreasing of the starting material deriving from the fossil sources and the increasing of the greenhouses emissions, the research has focused their effort on the developing of new industrial processes based on the transformation of starting materials deriving from the renewable sources into energy, fuels and chemicals. In particular, the aim of this thesis involves the investigation of two different processes: the first concerns the transformation of 1 butanol into butenes and maleic anhydride by oxidehydration process carried out in gas phase using vanadium/phosphorous mixed oxides. The second process regards the transformation of acetol to pyruvic acid by gas phase selective oxidation reaction, using different vanadium containing systems as catalysts. The results have shown the operative condition, the textural properties of the catalysts and the interaction between the substrate and the catalytic surface influence notably the reaction pathway.