A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR BIOMASS RECYCLING

COMBA, M. B.; GEROSA, G. G.; BOTTA, M. C.; MANGIONE, M. I.; SUÁREZ, A. G.; SAROTTI, A. M.; SPANEVELLO, R. A.

Golden

Otro; American Chemical Society Summer School on Green Chemistry; 2015

American Chemical Society

Biomass is a widely available raw material which has been recognized as an important source of fuels and chemical products. Products derived from biomass show highly accessible functionalization, structural diversity and chirality, properties not found in fossil oils. Cellulose, is the most abundant biopolymer present in the biomass, and its polymeric structure can be degraded to obtain chiral lower molecular weight products. For this reason, the generation of useful chemicals from cellulose or cellulosic waste materials is of great interest. By far, carbohydrates are the major annually renewable biofeedstocks from which to develop viable organic chemicals that can compete or eventually replace those derived from fossil sources.Levoglucosenone (1) is a versatile and readily available member of the carbohydrate derived chiral pool, which has been used as chiral synthon in the synthesis of a wide variety of compounds. As part of our program on the pyrolytic conversion of cellulose waste into high value chemicals, we have been concerned with the synthetic application of levoglucosenone as a chiral building block in the development of new asymmetric inductors and key synthetic intermediates.Conventional pyrolysis of cellulose or cellulose-containing materials such as waste paper is typically used to generate but microwave  irradiation of microcrystalline cellulose was recently found to be also effective.