Sn-Beta catalysed conversion of hemicellulosic sugars

Scientists from Denmark and the USA report the conversions of various pentoses and hexoses into methyl lactate and related products by using a Sn-Beta catalyst.

Esben Taarning and colleagues show that this Lewis Acidic zeotype material can convert hemicellulosic sugars into methyl lactate, glycoaldehyde dimethylacetal and methyl vinylglycolate.  The fact that this catalyst is able to convert both hexoses and pentoses to methyl lactate opens up the possibility of employing it in reactions with crude sugar mixtures.  This has major advantages over microorganism-catalysed reactions of sugars, as many microorganisms will often only use specific sugars as substrates.

This article will be free to access until the 12th March 2012!  Click on the link below to find out more…

Sn-Beta catalysed conversion of hemicellulosic sugars, Martin S. Holm, Yomaira J. Pagán-Torres, Shunmugavel Saravanamurugan, Anders Riisager, James A. Dumesic and Esben Taarning, Green Chem., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2GC16202D

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