The Chemical Conversion of Biomass-Derived Saccharides: an Overview

Abstract

Chemicals commodities and consumable, accounting for billions of ton of carbon per year, are produced in an industry based on non-renewable fossil feedstocks. Oil reserves are enough for feeding chemical industry for another century, and therefore, it is essential finding alternative sources of carbon for a progressive replacement of the industrial feedstock. In this context lignocellulosic, a renewable source of carbon composed mainly by polymers of sugars, appears as the most promising candidate. Herein, it will be discussed the status, challenges and prospective future of biomass as industrial feedstock in a raising biorefinery, aiming to clarify the real problems in the actual biomass processing. It will be shown that lignocellulosic biomass is able to replace oil in the production of several chemicals and also delivery new compounds with important applications. However, for a cost effective use of biomass, the development and improvement of solvent and catalytic systems play a leading role. The sustainability of biomass feedstock is also discussed from the economical, social and environmental points of view.

Subcritical Hydrothermal Conversion of Xylose Into Valuable Products in the Presence of Deep Eutectic Solvents

“…The reason for the decrease in C efficiency may come from the increase in the formation of humins and tar with respect to temperature. Gallo and Trapp stated that hydroxyl groups of HMF suppress the rehydration while decomposion of biomass and causes the formation of humin that is undesirable side products [23].…”

“…At 350°C, C efficiency decreased from 62.91% to 48.94% due to polymerization of products, humin and tar formation. Humin and other side products are undesired chemicals in the conversion of biomass [23,24]. The higher temperatures favored the further reactions and high molecular weight products may be produced, and low C efficiencies were obtained.…”

Future Prospect of the Production of 1,3-Butadiene from Butanediols

“…6,8 Studies on the synthesis of BD from ethanol can be dated back to early 1900's, and details are introduced in the recent review. 2 Among the pioneering research, Lebedev proposed a one-step dehydration process to convert ethanol into BD (Lebedev process) over ZnO-Al 2 O 3 catalyst but with a very low yield of BD.…”

CNF-Functionalization as Versatile Tool for Tuning Activity in Cellulose-Derived Product Hydrogenation

“…In this study, we focussed our attention on the importance of CNFs functionalization in the hydrogenation of two important biomass derived chemical platforms, namely levulinic acid (LA) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). Both molecules have attracted more attention in the past several years as potential renewable feedstock directly derived from cellulose for the production of fuels and fine chemicals [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. The hydrogenation of levulinic acid leads primarily to gamma-valerolactone (GVL) through either formation of 4-hydroxypentanoic acid (HPA) or angelica lactone (AL) as intermediates (Figure 1-top) [28,29].…”