A Robust Strategy for Sustainable Organic Chemicals Utilizing Bioprivileged Molecules

Abstract

Biobased chemicals will inevitably be an important part of a sustainable organic chemical industry. Current efforts in biobased chemicals are largely driven by opportunistic chemical product targets requiring complete technology development from feedstock to final product for a specific molecule. To enhance the development of biobased chemicals, it is important to create strategies that can be more systematic and can leverage advancements across multiple final products. Discussed here is the concept of bioprivileged molecules, which are chemical intermediates that have the potential to be efficiently converted into a range of product molecules that can both directly replace existing petrochemicals and are novel molecules that impart enhanced performance properties in end‐use applications.

Solvent-driven isomerization of cis,cis-muconic acid for the production of specialty and performance-advantaged cyclic biobased monomers

“…[24][25][26][27][28] The latter approach is particularly attractive as MA is a bioprivileged molecule with substantial potential for diversification to commodity and specialty chemicals, as well as novel molecules for enhanced end-use properties (Scheme 1). [29][30][31] Previous work has already demonstrated the conversion of MA to an array of aliphatic commodity monomers including adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine, 24,25,[32][33][34][35][36] cyclic monomers such as εcaprolactam, 37,38 TPA and CHDA, 5,19,39,40 and novel monounsaturated compounds such as 3-hexenedioic acid and 1,4cyclohex-1/2-enedicarboxylic acid (CH1DA, CH2DA). 19,[41][42][43][44] Although the downstream production of cyclic molecules has experienced some significant advances, 39,45 the initial isomerization of biologically-produced cis,cis-muconic acid (ccMA) to Diels-Alder active trans,trans-muconic acid (ttMA) remains a major bottleneck.…”

Application of Hydroprocessing, Fermentation, and Anaerobic Digestion in a Carbon-Negative Pyrolysis Refinery

“…Bio-oil also contains sugars that can be separated and fermented to produce ethanol (21). Bio-oil includes a large number of specialty chemicals that could be recovered with further technology development (22). Finally, biochar, the solid coproduct of biomass fast pyrolysis, is a carbon-rich resource that could displace coal for combustion applications (23) or serve as a carbon sequestration agent in agricultural applications (24).…”

Sustainable Chemistry – An Interdisciplinary Matrix Approach

“…The CO 2 reduction intermediates, methanol and formate, can be utilized in consecutive fermentation processes as carbon sources [31d] . The diversification of CCU has to be expanded and the concept of bio‐privileged molecules (intermediates) for further processing could be applied here [33] . For this case, microbial strains can be tailored by metabolic engineering.…”

“…[31d] The diversification of CCU has to be expanded and the concept of bio-privileged molecules (intermediates) for further processing could be applied here. [33] For this case, microbial strains can be tailored by metabolic engineering.…”