Functional Xylose Polymer Platform for Sustainable Plastics

该项目旨在开发能够利用生物质生物和生化工程处理中获得的糖分子的技术，并将其转化为具有相关应用特性的新聚合物平台。该方法还将纳入这些新材料的寿命终结，要么通过研究它们在各种条件下的降解，要么通过将它们反馈到生物和生化过程中。在大量的碳水化合物中，我们将重点关注d -木糖，因为它储量丰富，来自废物和非食用作物，其价格（0.5美元/公斤）接近石化原料。此外，木糖很容易被修饰，特别是通过酮化，并且与呋喃糖或吡喃糖形式一起工作的能力提供了多种单体的可能性。通过创建功能性木糖基聚合物的平台，我们还将努力确定一个明确的结构/性能关系，这将被用来提供具有所需性能的聚合物，包括作为商品塑料材料的应用。我们的工作计划将包括：1)从木糖合成功能化单体的最佳（几步，可再生试剂）和可扩展（目标规模100g），包括极性环单体，环烯烃和无环烯烃；2)利用从生物和生化处理中获得的富含木糖的生物质（如木聚糖）3)使用开环聚合（包括复分解）、无环二烯复分解聚合和可逆失活自由基聚合方法控制这些单体的聚合；4)合成聚合物的完整热、机械和物理特性；5)建立了这种新型聚合物平台的一般结构-性能关系；6)利用这些材料设计规则来开发更好的聚合物；7)所选聚合物作为商品塑料的加工和进一步评价；8)聚合物作为所选生物和生化过程的原料的利用，以探索热降解或水解降解的替代方法。

The project aims to develop the technologies which will enable the utilisation of sugar molecules derived from thebiological and biochemical engineering treatment of biomass, and transform them into a platform of new polymerswith properties relevant to applications. The approach will also incorporate the end-of-life of these new materials,either by studying their degradation under various conditions, or by feeding them back to biological and biochemicalprocesses.We will focus, amongst the large carbohydrate pool, on D-xylose, as it is abundant, comes from waste and non-ediblecrops, and its price ($0.5/kg) is close to petrochemical feedstocks.Furthermore, xylose is easily modified, in particular via ketal functionalisation, and the ability to work with its furanoseor pyranose form offers multiple monomer possibilities.By creating a platform of functional xylose-based polymers, we will also strive to identify a clear structure/propertyrelationship, which will be exploited to deliver polymers with the desired properties, including for application ascommodity plastic materials.Our work programme will include:1) the optimal (few steps, renewable reagents) and scalable (target scale 100g) synthesis of functionalisedmonomers from xylose, including polar cyclic monomers, cyclic and acyclic olefins;2) the utilization of xylose-rich stream obtained from biological and biochemical treatments of selected biomass (e.g.xylans)3) the controlled polymerisation of these monomers using ring-opening polymerisation (including metathesis), acyclicdiene metathesis polymerisation, and reversible deactivation radical polymerisation methods;4) the complete thermal, mechanical and physical characterisation of the synthesised polymers;5) the formulation of a general structure-property relationship for this new polymer platform;6) the exploitation of these material design rules to develop better polymers;7) the processing and further evaluation of selected polymers as c ommodity plastics8) the utilization of the polymers as feedstock for selected biological and biochemical processes, to explorealternative end-of-life options to thermal or hydrolytic degradation.