Integrated design of renewable fuels and their production processes: recent advances and challenges

Rational design of renewable fuels for advanced internal combustion engines aims at enabling CO2 -neutral road transportation with low pollutant emissions. It requires identifying species/mixtures with favorable fuel properties and designing sustainable production processes. We have discussed opportunities and challenges of integrating fuel and production process design in 2012 [9]. The present article reviews the progress made since then. Importantly, the field has moved from single -molecule fuel evaluation and mass - based production pathway screening to multi -species fuel design and energy -based pathway assessment. Integrated methods now simultaneously optimize fuel composition and production pathways. We discuss challenges in incorporating more detailed modeling and give perspectives on well -to -wheel optimization.