Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

This research's primary objective is to develop and assess alternative catalysts, solvents, and flow chemistry tools to upgrade lignocellulosic biomass to value-added products. Although the field of alternative solvents such as switchable hydrophilicity solvents (SHSs) or CO2 is now well advanced, I propose novel uses of SHSs and gasses as separation systems and catalysts for refining of value-added bioproducts. Novel uses can be found in all biomass upgrading stages, such as extraction (e.g. SHSs used to extract lignin monomers) or catalysis (e.g. use of CO2 as a catalyst in producing bio-jet fuel from cellulose). My research program's long-term objective is to develop and assess alternative catalysts, solvents, and flow chemistry tools to upgrade lignocellulosic biomass to value-added products. The specific short-term objectives to be addressed within the tenure of this Discovery Grant fall in the following two themes: 1) Use of SHS as both catalyst and solvent in the production of value-added products; 2) Use of gases as a catalyst, reactant and solvent for the production of biomass-derived products. Themes 1 and 2 can be conceived as parallel streams where the objective is to develop alternative catalysts, solvents, and the methods to apply them to biomass conversion in batch and flow. In Theme 1, SHSs are evaluated as catalysts and solvents; in Theme 2, waste gases are evaluated for the same roles. Theme 1 looks to expand on my current work using SHSs as catalysts in aldol condensation. Four main sub-activities are envisioned: 1) use of SHSs as catalysts in other reactions to produce value-added macromolecule precursor (e.g. pseudoephedrine, acedoben, anthranilic acid, ranitidine, 5-(dimethylamino-methyl)furan alcohol, 2-[[(5-dimethylamino-methyl-2-furanyl)methylthio]ethaneamine, etc.), 2) development of novel chiral SHSs and assessment of their use as catalysts, 3) testing of SHSs as solvents and catalysts in biomass conversion and upgrading, 4) development of flow systems utilizing SHSs. Theme 2 aims at extending the use of waste gasses into novel reactions and biomass conversion systems. Three main sub-activities fall under this theme 1) waste gasses will be used as catalyst, reactant, and solvent in various reactions (e.g. thiol type Michael addition, Henry reaction, Diels-Alder, Nitro aldol etc.). The increased scope of use will include assessing "dirty" waste gasses as opposed to clean laboratory gasses. 2) the lessons learned in part 1 will be applied to using gasses as solvent and catalyst in upgrading lignocellulosic biomass. 3) flow techniques will be developed using the information gained in previous sub-projects.