Catalytic conversion of carbohydrates to diketone derivatives: a potential renewable platform chemical – BIOPLATFORM

Conversion of biomass to biofuel or other valuable products can be achieved via selective conversion of individual components of biomass. In such cases, the process was established based on using a bioplatform molecule as starting material. Now, it is necessary to develop new bioplatform molecule in order to strengthen the study of value-added conversions of biomass because of the following facts: (i) the numbers of known bioplatform molecules are rather limited and (ii) some bioplatform molecules have similar reactivity, which tended to give the same type of downstream products. The French partners of this project have recently reported a method to synthesize 1-hydroxy-2,5-hexanedione (HHD) by using biomass-derived sugars as starting material. The Chinese coordinator has several years of experience on studying the acid-acid-catalyzed tandem reactions of polycarbonyl compounds. It can be conjectured that HHD could be a good choice of bioplatform molecule for implementing the study of biomass conversion because this molecule has unique reactivity. In this project, we will focus on fundamental study of value-added conversions of carbohydrates by proposing C6 diketone HHD as a bioplatform molecule. It involves the following two parts: (i) developing highly efficient and recyclable catalytic system for the synthesis of HHD by using renewable carbohydrates as starting materials; (ii) downstream conversions of HHD to valuable chemical products through rational design of the reactions pathway. The novelty of this project displayed in (i) establishing a unique bifunctional catalytic system by adopting an acidic ionic liquid as a key component of the catalyst system, which enabled the established system to possess not only the ability of both acid and hydrogenation catalysts but also being recyclable; (ii) synthesizing some valuable chemicals that cannot be obtained from the other bioplatform molecules, and thus demonstrating the great potential of HHD as an irreplaceable platform molecule for biomass conversion.