Chemists at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Utrecht University have developed a new method to produce a promising chemical building block from biomass. This compound can serve as a precursor for useful products such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, and flavour and fragrance ingredients. Conventionally, its production requires hazardous chemicals. The Dutch research team now demonstrates that the process can instead be driven by electricity, using a simple setup and without the addition of dangerous chemicals. They published the results in the scientific journal ChemSusChem.
The research centres on the compound 2(5H)-furanone, which has considerable industrial potential as a feedstock for a wide range of functional materials. Dmitri Pirgach, PhD candidate at Wageningen, succeeded in producing this compound from furfural, a liquid derived from sugars in plant-based residues such as agricultural waste. Scientists had previously also succeeded in converting this bio-based furfural into the versatile furanone, but these methods typically require liquid bromine, a toxic substance that entails strict safety measures.
No need to store toxic bromine
In the new method, Pirgach avoids the need to add bromine directly. Instead, the reaction takes place in an electrochemical reactor, a setup in which an electric current drives the chemical transformation. Instead of using liquid bromine, the researchers use bromide salts such as sodium bromide. These are relatively harmless salts in which bromine occurs in a bound form. When current passes through the reactor, the bromide is oxidised at the electrode to form bromine at the electrode. This reacts with water, triggering the oxidation of furfural and initiating a sequence of reaction steps that ultimately yield 2(5H)-furanone.
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