Catalytic valorization of cellulosic biomass into plattform chemicals
Investigador principal.- GLORIA ESTHER ALONSO SÁNCHEZ
Título del proyecto.- Síntesis de catalizadores en dióxido de carbono supercrítico para la conversión selectiva de celulosa en compuestos químicos base “commodities”
Código de referencia del proyecto.- CTQ2011-27347
Entidad Financiadora.- Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
Programa/Plan.- Programa Estatal de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad
Año de la Resolución (fecha).- 2011 Duración: 3 Años
Importe concedido.- 145.200,00€
Currently, conversion of biomass into energy, fuels, and valuable chemicals have attracted a good piece of attention in order to the problems arising from the depletion of fossil fuels and global warming issue. In this sense, hexitols from hydrogenation of cellulosic biomass with a wide range of uses such as in food industry, cosmetics, medical and industrial applications.
Cellulose is the most abundant source of biomass; nevertheless its low reactivity had restricted its use only for paper industry. Therefore to overcome this matter, heterogeneous catalysts appear as a very interesting alternative because different kind of catalysts could be prepared and tested in a widespread range of reaction conditions. Therefore, researchers of our group are working on catalytic hydrogenation of sugars and cellulose into sorbitol and manitol using nickel, ruthenium and Ni-Ru over MCM-48 catalysts in order to achieve high yields and selectivities into sorbitol and mannitol (Scheme 1).

Main results
- Ó. Benito-Román, A. Martín-Cortés, M. J. Cocero, E. Alonso, Dissolution of (1-3),(1-4)-B-glucans in Pressurized Hot Water: quantitative assessment of the degradation and the effective extraction, International Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry 2016 (Open Access)
- A. Sastre, A. Martín, E. Alonso, Adsorption of nickelocene and ruthenocene in mesoporous silica MCM-48 and activated carbon supports, in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide, Journal of Supercritical Fluids 117 (2016), 138-146
- S. Aspromonte, A. Sastre, A. Boix, M. J. Cocero, E. Alonso*, Optimization in the supercritical CO2 deposition of CoxOy nanoparticles in MCM41, The Journal of Supercritical Fluids 110 (2016), 47-55 doi:10.1016/j.supflu.2015.11.026
- A. Romero, D.A. Cantero, A. Nieto-Márquez, C. Martínez, E. Alonso, M.J. Cocero, Supercritical water hydrolysis of cellulosic biomass as effective pretreatment to catalytic production of hexitols and ethylene glycol over Ru/MCM-48 Green Chemistry, 18 (14) (2016), pp. 4051-4062.
- A. Romero, E. Alonso*, Á. Sastre, A. Nieto-Márquez, Conversion of Biomass into Sorbitol: Cellulose Hydrolysis on MCM-48 and D-Glucose Hydrogenation on Ru/MCM-48, Microporous & Mesoporous Materials, 224, (2016), 1-8 doi:10.1016/j.micromeso.2015.11.013
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