Bio based factory: Sustainable chemistry from wood (BioFact)

Fossil oil depletion imposes a societal driven shift to non-edible biomass as a renewable feedstock for chemicals. Wood is among the most abundant carbon sources on earth, and is ideal to address this challenge. Wood contains (hemi)cellulose (carbohydrates) and lignin, a polymeric network of arenes. Biorefineries mostly focus on the former, using lignin only as low value fuel. This project's ambitious aim is to transform lignin into high-value chemicals and polymers, starting with the very challenging selective depolymerization of lignin. In KULeuven's ‘lignin-first' concept, even before carbohydrate valorization, wood is treated in a selective way to recover just 4 biobased aromatic molecules in high yield. Next, selective catalytic (de)functionalization of the 4 molecules will lead to catechol and pyrogallol. Innovative synthetic methods (aminations, reductions, C(sp2)-O cross-coupling and C(sp2/sp3)-H functionalization) will transform these into important chemicals (substituted phenols, anilines etc). Finally, biobased chemicals are coupled with CO2 to form valuable functional polymers. Modelling, e.g. via Advanced Molecular Dynamics will allow to rationalize and even predict reactivity and selectivity in realistic operating conditions, lending strong support to the development of new concepts for transformation of aromatics.