Chemical valorisation of Lignins: toward fine chemicals and polymers – CHEMLIVAL

The main objective of this research project is to develop new environmentally friendly synthetic pathways for the synthesis of aromatic chemicals by selective heterogeneous catalysis from renewable biomass, here lignins, with a long term application to the synthesis of bio-active molecules and technical polymers.
Following our interest in the discovery of environmentally friendly procedures for the synthesis of relatively complex organic molecules or in the valorisation of biomass (wood materials), we intend to propose alternative production processes to the current syntheses from petrochemicals whose resources are currently decreasing. This approach also answers the current chemical industry concerns linked to REACH. Indeed, innovative and clean catalytic technologies designed to reduce energy consumption and the amount of wastes produced during the synthesis of high added value building blocks and molecules of interest from a non-alimentary bio-resource will be developed throughout the project. Moreover, we intend to avoid the intermediate functionalisation of the aromatic compounds issued from lignin limiting thus strongly the wastes production but also the chemical risk for human and its environment.
Additionally, we would like to point out that within this project, through the industrial partnership, we will consider the up-grading of lignin obtained from the paper and bioethanol industries giving thus a like second life to wood resources, instead of simply using it as energy source.
The project is divided in two main areas: 1/ the selective catalytic depolymerisation of lignin to access an aromatic pool addressing the problems of selectivity and purifications, and, 2/ the transformation of obtained aromatics towards targeted building blocks for fine chemicals and technical polymers by innovative catalytic procedures. To achieve these goals new catalytic materials will be developed and evaluated in close relationship with process development in order to gain the highest possible selectivity required for a viable process.
If both areas have been, and are currently, the centre of investigation, mainly by academic researchers in France and Europe, to the best of our knowledge none has complementarily investigated the overall approach that consists in producing aromatic stuff from lignin and to implement them in the synthesis of (a) target compound(s). This is the objective of this ambitious project.
In more details, while lignin valorisation has been described by research group in Europe (mainly: France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland), Canada and USA, to date no process to access to an aromatic pool, as expected from this project, runs except that linked to vanillin production (like in Borregaard AG). If several research groups around the world are currently developing so-called innovative cross-coupling methodologies, none of those has described the use of functional molecules like phenols or carboxylic acids as the aromatic stuff made available through lignin depolymerisation. These observations are acknowledged as well when considering technical polymers (like varnishes or paints) are still today produced from petrochemicals. These are the fields in which the team proposes to carry out researches.
The team, whatever one considers the bio-polymers and particularly the lignin, or the catalytic reactions from the key building-blocks issued from lignin degradation to the target molecules, or the multifunctional catalysts, possesses all expertises to perform this project by putting together strongly implied researchers and technicians from very different subfields (i.e. organic synthesis, organometallic chemistry, biopolymers, material preparation and characterisation, catalysis, kinetic….).
Noteworthy, this project was submitted to the 2010 call for proposal from the ANR in the CD2I program. We took all the recommendations from the ANR into consideration, and modified the proposal accordingly.