Biomass-Based Chemicals Could Reduce Dependence on Petroleum
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research have found a new way to make important chemicals using biomass instead of petroleum. Their research has been published in the journal Science.
The chemical industry is under pressure to change. There is a growing need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, support recycling, and deal with political instability linked to fossil fuels. Because of this, researchers are looking for alternatives to petroleum, which is currently the main raw material used to make chemicals for medicines and other products. One key question is how these important chemical building blocks can be made in the future without using fossil fuels.
A research team led by Professor Benjamin List has shown that biomass can be a strong alternative. Biomass comes from plant material and can be renewed, unlike petroleum.
“Our idea is simple: use biomass instead of petroleum to make chemicals,” says Nils Frank, a PhD student working in Prof. List’s group. While petroleum has been studied in great detail over many years, biomass still has many unused possibilities.
The team focused on a group of compounds called furans. Furans can be made from biomass, but they have not been studied much because chemists mainly worked with petroleum-based materials in the past.
“For decades, most research was centered on petroleum. As a result, the potential of furans was largely ignored,” explains Nils Frank. “We decided to explore this area more deeply.”
The researchers achieved an important breakthrough. Until now, furans have been usually changed into alcohols or carboxylic acids using oxidation or reduction reactions. A simple method to open the furan ring without changing its oxidation state was not known. The team successfully achieved this using a method called photohydrolysis.
Light plays a key role in this process. “The reaction needs extra energy to happen,” says Frank. “That energy comes from light, similar to how plants use light in photosynthesis.”
Professor Benjamin List believes this approach could shape the future of chemistry. “Carbon dioxide and light could become the basic building blocks of tomorrow’s chemical industry,” he says. “This discovery is only the beginning.”
The reaction also passes through a previously unknown intermediate structure. Dr. Markus Leutzsch studied this step using spectroscopy and found that the reaction forms a heterocycle that has never been described before.
Most importantly, the team showed that valuable medicines, such as prostaglandins and antibiotics, can be made directly from furans. This avoids extra steps involving oxidation and reduction, making the process simpler and more efficient.
While it is still too early to say whether medicines will be produced this way in the future, there is strong potential. Another team member, Dr. Moreshwar Chaudhari, showed that the reaction can be scaled up using a light-powered flow reactor, a technique already used in industry.
This research opens the door to cleaner and more sustainable chemical production.
