Synthesis of highly-branched alkanes for renewable gasoline

The gasoline market in the US is nearly twice that of diesel and jet fuel combined, and yet, nearly all research efforts to produce synthetic, biobased fuels center around these latter products. The reason for this is that a major component of gasoline is highly branched alkanes which, unlike straight chained products, are not readily derived from either fatty acid- or carbohydrate-based feedstocks. This review unpacks the motivations behind renewable gasoline synthesis and examines representative approaches to the targeted, de novo synthesis of densely-branched, high-octane isoalkanes and cycloalkanes employing chemocatalytic methods, as contrasted with the catalytic refining of biomass-derived feeds using petrochemical technologies.