Sustainable exploitation of renewable resources

In recent years, global warming and diminishing fossil resources have driven society to find renewable alternatives and biomass has attracted much attention due to its potential to produce valuable compounds, fuels and chemicals. Among biomass-derived products, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and levulinic acid (LA) are identified to be important versatile molecules, due to their poly-functional structures which ensure high reactivity. In particular, as concerns HMF, hydrogenation of pure HMF and biomass-derived HMF to 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)furan and 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)tetrahydrofuran has been performed in water employing commercial Ru, Pd and Pt supported catalysts in a simple process. On the other hand, as concerns LA, hydrogenation of biomass-derived LA to ɤ-valerolactone (GVL) has been studied by adopting bi-functional (acid and hydrogenating) catalytic systems based on Ru/C and niobium oxide or niobium phosphate as acid catalyst under mild reaction conditions in fully aqueous media. Besides, the acid-catalyzed ketalisation of ethyl levulinate and 1,2-dodecanediol has been investigated to obtain a green bio-surfactant by using different acid catalysts.