Plant Biomass to Chemical Feedstock

Rapid depletion of fossil fuels and increased consumer demands for materials are the driving forces behind scientific work to discover new feedstocks for materials. Cellulose, an abundant carbohydrate comprised of multiple glucose units, has the potential to be converted into fuels or various platform-molecules. However, converting cellulose with high efficiency and low cost is yet to be perfected, and difficulties in using cellulose rise from intramolecular hydrogen bonding. We focused on cellobiose, a two-glucose dimer, because of its solubility in water. We aim to identify the lowest energetic requirements to convert cellobiose into hydrogenated polyols without use of transition metal catalysts like ruthenium or palladium. Results show that aqueous cellobiose is converted to sugar alcohols at 550 psi of hydrogen gas and 200ºC. Future work will focus on cellulose conversion, hoping to overcome the solubility issue, and using the increased acidity of near-super critical water