Intramolecular dehydration of biomass-derived sugar alcohols in high-temperature water

Deoxygenation of biomass-derived feedstocks: oxorhenium-catalyzed deoxydehydration of sugars and sugar alcohols.

The conversion of renewable cellulosic biomass into fuels and chemicals has attracted increased attention with the growing demand for sustainability. However, one fundamental challenge is that saccharides, the major component of cellulosic biomass, are highly oxygen-rich when compared with the majority of current commodity chemicals and fuels. The polyol structure also generally presents poor s...

Catalytic dehydration of alcohols

Selective oxidations of activated alcohols in water at room temperature.

Allylic and benzylic alcohols can be selectively oxidized to their corresponding aldehydes or ketones in water containing nanoreactors composed of the designer surfactant TPGS-750-M. The oxidation relies on catalytic amounts of CuBr, bpy, and TEMPO, with N-methyl-imidazole; air is the stoichiometric oxidant.

Bioabatement to remove inhibitors from biomass-derived sugar hydrolysates.

Bioabatement is a potential method to remove inhibitory compounds from lignocellulose hydrolysates that could be incorporated into a scheme for fermentation of ethanol from cellulose. Coniochaeta ligniaria NRRL30616, an Ascomycete that metabolizes furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, is a unique strain that may be useful for detoxifying biomass sugars. NRRL30616 and 23 related fungal strains w...

Cell volumes and water contents of frog muscles in solutions of permeant sugars and sugar alcohols.

1. Previous work has suggested that living cells may acquire and then maintain different water contents and hence volume, in solutions containing different concentrations of solutes that are permeant to the cell membrane. Toward better understanding of this phenomenon, two hypotheses were introduced: one hypothesis is based on the membrane-pump theory; another represents an extension of the pol...