Catalytic transformation of cellulose into platform chemicals

Conversion of biomass to renewable and valuable chemicals has attracted global interest in order to build up sustainable societies. Cellulose is the most abundant and non-food biomass; however, the low reactivity of cellulose has prevented its use in chemical industry except for the paper manufacturing. The heterogeneous catalysis for the conversion of cellulose has been expected to overcome this issue, because various types of heterogeneous catalysts can be designed and applied in a wide range of reaction conditions. Furthermore, solid catalysts are easily recovered and reused. In this review article, we show the present situation and perspective of heterogeneous catalysis for the transformation of cellulose into useful platform chemicals.

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► Heterogeneous catalysis for the transformation of cellulose to platform chemicals.
► Pretreatment techniques for degrading the rigid structure of cellulose.
► Production of sorbitol under hydrolytic hydrogenation conditions.
► Hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose by heterogeneous catalysts.
► Direct synthesis of valuable chemicals from cellulose.