Producing fuels and chemicals from biomass (wood, grasses, etc.) is one of the most promising solutions for building a renewable economy. The process involves breaking down, or "deconstructing", plants to produce single carbohydrates, mostly in the form of simple sugars like xylose and glucose. But even though these sugars are valuable, current processes for plant deconstruction often end up degrading them.

Now, the lab of Jeremy Luterbacher at EPFL has developed a chemical method that stabilizes simple sugars and prevents them from being degraded. This method could mean that chemists no longer have to balance deconstruction of the plant with avoiding degradation of the product.

The new method changes the chemical susceptibility of the sugars to dehydration and degradation by latching aldehydes onto them. The process is reversible, meaning that that the sugars can be retrieved after deconstruction.

The chemists tried their method on beechwood. First, they turned it into pulp using a paper-making technique called organosolv, which solubilizes wood into acetone or ethanol. But in order to latch aldehydes onto the sugars, the scientists mixed the beechwood with formaldehyde.

With this approach, they were able to recover over 90% of xylose sugars as opposed to only 16% xylose without formaldehyde. When they broke down the remaining pulp to glucose, the carbohydrate yield was over 70%, compared to 28% without formaldehyde.

"Before, people had always been looking for often expensive systems that limited sugar degradation," says Jeremy Luterbacher. "With stabilization, you worry less about this degradation and this frees you up to develop cheaper and faster transformations for plants, potentially accelerating the emergence of renewable consumer products."

Ydna M. Questell-Santiago, Raquel Zambrano-Valera, Masoud Talebi Amiri, Jeremy S. Luterbacher. Carbohydrate stabilization extends the kinetic limits of chemical polysaccharide depolymerization. Nature Chemistry 17 September 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-018-0134-4

Related Links
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Bio Fuel Technology and Application News

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Europe's renewable energy initiative is bad news for forest health, scientists argue
Washington (UPI) Sep 12, 2018
The European Union wants to double its use of renewable energy by 2030. To meet the target, the European Union's Renewable Energy Directive has designated wood as a low-carbon fuel source. That's a bad idea, according to a new paper published this week in the journal Nature. According to researchers' calculations, an increase in the use of wood as fuel will boost greenhouse gas emissions and decimate forests. It's true that wood regrows, scientists acknowledge, but in the short-term, lar ... read more