[ad_1]
The production of fuels and chemicals from biomass (wood, grass, etc.) is one of the most promising solutions for building a renewable economy. The process involves deconstructing plants to produce unique carbohydrates, mainly in the form of simple sugars such as xylose and glucose. But even if these sugars are valuable, the current processes of plant deconstruction often end up degrading them.
Today, Jeremy Luterbacher's laboratory at EPFL has developed a chemical method that stabilizes simple sugars and prevents them from degrading. This method could mean that chemists no longer have to balance the deconstruction of the plant to avoid product degradation.
The new method modifies the chemical sensitivity of sugars to dehydration and degradation by blocking aldehydes. The process is reversible, which means that sugars can be recovered after deconstruction.
Chemists have tried their method on beech wood. First of all, they turned it into pulp using a paper making technique called organosolv, which solubilizes the wood in acetone or ethanol. But to lock aldehydes on sugars, scientists mixed beech wood with formaldehyde.
With this approach, they were able to recover more than 90% of xylose sugars, compared with only 16% of formaldehyde-free xylose. When breaking down the remaining pulp into glucose, the carbohydrate yield was over 70%, compared with 28% without formaldehyde.
"Before, people had always looked for often expensive systems that limited the degradation of sugar," says Jeremy Luterbacher. "With stabilization, you care less about this degradation and this frees you from developing cheaper and faster transformations for plants, which can accelerate the emergence of renewable consumer products."
The research is published in Chemistry of nature aujourd & # 39; hui.
More information:
Ydna M. Questell-Santiago et al, Carbohydrate stabilization extends the kinetic limits of the chemical depolymerization of polysaccharides, Chemistry of nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41557-018-0134-4
The production of fuels and chemicals from biomass (wood, grass, etc.) is one of the most promising solutions for building a renewable economy. The process involves deconstructing plants to produce unique carbohydrates, mainly in the form of simple sugars such as xylose and glucose. But even if these sugars are valuable, the current processes of plant deconstruction often end up degrading them.
Today, Jeremy Luterbacher's laboratory at EPFL has developed a chemical method that stabilizes simple sugars and prevents them from degrading. This method could mean that chemists no longer have to balance the deconstruction of the plant to avoid product degradation.
The new method modifies the chemical sensitivity of sugars to dehydration and degradation by blocking aldehydes. The process is reversible, which means that sugars can be recovered after deconstruction.
Chemists have tried their method on beech wood. First of all, they turned it into pulp using a paper making technique called organosolv, which solubilizes the wood in acetone or ethanol. But to lock aldehydes on sugars, scientists mixed beech wood with formaldehyde.
With this approach, they were able to recover more than 90% of xylose sugars, compared with only 16% of formaldehyde-free xylose. When breaking down the remaining pulp into glucose, the carbohydrate yield was over 70%, compared with 28% without formaldehyde.
"Before, people had always looked for often expensive systems that limited the degradation of sugar," says Jeremy Luterbacher. "With stabilization, you care less about this degradation and this frees you from developing cheaper and faster transformations for plants, which can accelerate the emergence of renewable consumer products."
The research is published in Chemistry of nature aujourd & # 39; hui.
More information:
Ydna M. Questell-Santiago et al, Carbohydrate stabilization extends the kinetic limits of the chemical depolymerization of polysaccharides, Chemistry of nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41557-018-0134-4
Source link
