Ruthenium porphyrin complexes as catalysts for the hydrodeoxygenation of sugar derived substrates to polymer precursors.

糖及其衍生物可以直接从甜菜、甘蔗玉米淀粉或其他谷物中获得，或者--最好是非食用用途--通过消化非食用生物质，如稻草、玉米秆、木屑、树皮、草等。这些生物质广泛地可以从加拿大的农业和林业部门获得，原则上可以作为可再生碳原料，用于发展真正可持续的化学工业，提供制造塑料、涂料、涂料、树脂、化妆品和制药所需的燃料、溶剂和基础化学品。 然而，从化学家的角度来看，这些糖衍生物与目前定义我们的技术和文明的化石碳饲料(天然气、原油和煤炭)有着非常不同的性质。因此，它们需要经历大量的化学转化，才能用作例如溶剂或聚合物构建块。特别是，糖衍生物的含氧量太高，其总体反应活性无法控制，无法整合到(石油)化学工业的现有生产流程中。 为了应对这一挑战，我们正在开发一种新的工艺，可以通过一种名为“加氢脱氧”的反应来降低这些分子的氧含量，这种反应通过与氢气反应去除水中的氧原子，而氢气又可以通过使用风能和太阳能产生的可再生电力电解水来获得。这可以将生物质转化为碳饲料，有效地与原油精炼获得的碳饲料相同，但最终来自当地种植的植物材料。实现这种加氢脱氧过程需要使用催化剂，即能够实现、加速和指导所需类型的化学转化的人造金属化合物。因此，圭尔夫大学施拉夫研究小组的重点是此类催化剂的合理设计、测试和评估以及整个工艺流程的开发。

Sugars and their derivatives can be obtained either directly from sugar beets, sugar cane corn starch or other grain or - much preferably for non-food application - by the digestion of non-food biomass such as straws, corn stover, wood chips, barks, grasses, etc. This biomass is widely available from Canada's agriculture and forestry sectors and could in principle be used as the renewable carbon feed stock for the development of a truly sustainable chemical industry supplying fuel as well as solvents and basic chemicals for the manufacture of plastics, coatings, paints, resins, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. From a chemist's perspective these sugar derivatives have however very different properties than the fossil carbon feeds (natural gas crude oil and coal) that presently define our technology and civilization. They therefore need to go undergo substantial chemical transformations in order to be usable as e.g., solvents or polymer building blocks. In particular, the oxygen content of the sugar derivatives is too high and their overall reactivity to uncontrollable for them to be integrated into the existing production streams of the (petro-) chemical industry. In order to address this challenge, we are developing new processes that can lower the oxygen content of these molecules by a reaction called "hydrodeoxygenation" that removes oxygen atoms as water by reaction with hydrogen gas, which in turn can be obtained by electrolysis of water using renewable electricity generated from Wind and Solar. This can convert the biomass to a carbon feed that is effectively identical to that obtained from the refining of crude oil, but ultimately originates from locally grown plant material. The realization of such hydrodeoxygenation processes requires the use of catalysts, i.e., man-made metal-based compounds that can enable, accelerate and direct the type of chemical transformation required. The focus of the Schlaf Research Group at the University of Guelph is therefore on the rational design, testing and evaluation of such catalysts and the development over the overall technical process.