Project: Integrated valorization of lignocellulosic agroindustrial waste to furan based building blocks

Our planet’s fossil raw materials are irreversibly diminishing, and the progressive switch of chemical industry to renewable feedstock appears as an unavoidable requirement. Although the chemical community starts being aware of the above problem, production of organic chemicals from renewable feedstock is at the moment far from being technically optimized. Biomass is significantly more multifaceted than fossil raw materials, and constitutes a complex blend of low and high molecular weight products. Furfural (F), readily obtained by cyclodehydration of naturallyoccuring pentosans, appears to be the only unsaturated largevolume organic chemical prepared from biomass. In this line, the furan analog 5 (hydroxymethyl)furfural (HMF) derived from hexoses is considered to be one promising biorenewable building block for the production of polymer monomers and other chemical commodities. This proposal aims to build an integrated platform for the valorization of lignocellulosic agroindustrial waste to furan based building blocks via the discovery of efficient transformation of pentoses (mainly xylose) and hexoses (mainly glucose) to furfural, HMF, and HMF analogs by more efficient and competitive catalyzed technologies. In addition, new advanced furanbased intermediates will be developed, to create more structurally complex target molecules.

Acronym CelluloseSynTech (Reference Number: ELAC2014/BEE-0341)
Duration 01/01/2015 - 01/01/2018
Project Topic Small scale self-sustainable biorefineries
Project Results
(after finalisation)
not yet available
Network ERANet-LAC
Call ERANet-LAC 1st Joint Call on Research and Innovation between the EU Member States and Associated Countries and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
1 Associacao de Faculdade de Farmácia para a investigacao e desenvolvimento Coordinator Portugal
2 Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Ciencias Alicadas Partner Argentina
3 Université Pierre et Marie Curie Partner France
4 Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia Partner Colombia