{"id":172534,"date":"2026-01-22T07:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T06:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=172534"},"modified":"2026-01-21T15:14:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:14:04","slug":"a-new-sustainable-raw-material-for-chemistry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/a-new-sustainable-raw-material-for-chemistry-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A new sustainable raw material for chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Biomass
Biomass instead of petroleum to obtain chemical raw materials: this is the focus of the research project led by Nils Frank from Prof. Benjamin List’s working group.
\u00a9 Nils Frank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A research project conducted by the Max-Planck-Institut f\u00fcr Kohlenforschung shows how biomass can be used as a raw material for chemical products instead of petroleum. The scientists have now published their exciting findings in the journal Science.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cOur motto is: biomass as a chemical raw material instead of petroleum,\u201d explains Nils Frank, a doctoral student in Benjamin List’s team.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But unlike petroleum, the chemical potential of biomass is far from being exhausted. In their project, which was published in the journal Science, Nils Frank and the team from the List laboratory focused on so-called furans, a product of biomass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor decades, chemists have been focussing on petroleum, which is why the possibilities offered by furans have hardly been investigated. We took a closer look at this,\u201d says Nils Frank<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Established processes oxidize or reduce furans to alcohols or carboxylic acids \u2013 a simple, redox-neutral ring opening to, for example, the dialdehyde succinaldehyde was not known. This redox-neutral reaction was achieved thanks to a process known as photohydrolysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLight is important because the reaction is an \u2018uphill\u2019 reaction,\u201d explains Nils Frank.<\/strong> This means that energy must be supplied for the reaction to take place. And, as in natural photosynthesis, this energy comes from light. \u201cCarbon dioxide and light are the building blocks of a future chemical industry, and Nils’ discovery is just the beginning of our work in this direction, which is funded by the Werner Siemens Foundation,\u201d says Ben List.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The intermediates through which the reaction proceeds are also exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Co-author Dr. Markus Leutzsch<\/strong> accompanied the studies spectroscopically: \u201cInterestingly, we found that the reaction proceeds via a heterocycle that has not yet been described scientifically.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The team was thus able to show that valuable pharmaceuticals such as prostaglandins or antibiotics can be produced directly from furans without detours via oxidation and reduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nils Frank<\/strong> cannot yet say whether pharmaceuticals will one day be produced in this way. \u201cHowever, my colleague Dr. Moreshwar Chaudhari was able to show that the reaction is arbitrarily scalable by developing an illuminated flow reactor, a form of application that is used particularly in industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A research project conducted by the Max-Planck-Institut f\u00fcr Kohlenforschung shows how biomass can be used as a raw material for chemical products instead of petroleum. The scientists have now published their exciting findings in the journal Science. \u201cOur motto is: biomass as a chemical raw material instead of petroleum,\u201d explains Nils Frank, a doctoral student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":172536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Plant residues instead of fossil fuels: A new way to produce important chemicals is being demonstrated in a current research project at the Max-Planck-Institut f\u00fcr Kohlenforschung","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838,5714,5842,10416,10408,27449],"supplier":[620,22570],"class_list":["post-172534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","tag-biofuels","tag-biomass","tag-circulareconomy","tag-greenchemistry","tag-photohydrolysis","supplier-max-planck-institut-fuer-kohlenforschung","supplier-science-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172534"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=172534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}