Sustainable Chemicals: A Brief Survey of the Furans
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Sustainable Chemicals: A Brief Survey of the Furans Austine O. Iroegbu1 · Emmanuel R. Sadiku1 · Suprakash S. Ray2,3 · Yskandar Hamam4,5 Received: 9 December 2019 / Accepted: 9 February 2020 © The Tunisian Chemical Society and Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Whether it is in the textiles, paints and coatings, energy sector, polymers, plastics, woods, sugar chemistry, pharmacy, aerospace and the automotive industries, the multiplicity of applications of furans and their derivatives, have made steady, impressive, and progressive impacts over the last 9 decades. After World War II, due to the shift in focus towards the petroleum-based chemical feedstocks, research, and development studies of these impressive class of lignocellulosic-derived chemicals, slowed down markedly. The trend, however, has reversed remarkably in recent time, due to the pursuit for “green” and sustainable chemical feedstocks, coupled with the increasing concerns over climate change, volatile oil prices and the attendant undesirable environmental issues, associated with fossil hydrocarbons. Chemicals obtained from “green” inedible lignocellulosic biomass, such as: the furans and their derivatives, ranks amongst the most promising, sustainable, and industrially applicable alternatives to various petroleum-derived chemicals; further offering an enormous assortment of unique compounds/materials, and properties analogous to and even exceeding those derived from fossil hydrocarbons. This article reviews selected progresses, so far made, in the field of furans and its derivatives and their application portfolios; while recognising the immense contributions of Peters and Dunlop, who in no small measures, advanced the furan chemical industry during their research efforts at the Oat Hull Research Centre at the Quaker Oats Company, Cedar Rapids, USA. Keywords Lignocellulosic biomass · Hemicellulose · Biobased chemicals · Furans · Furfural · Furfuryl alcohol · Furandicarboxylic acids · Furan resins · Sustainable chemical feedstock
1 Introduction Inedible lignocellulosic biomass is well-known to be a favourable feedstock and its momentous change in the pursuit for green and sustainable chemistry is of great importance in the modern day well-deserved environmental
* Austine O. Iroegbu [email protected] 1
Department of Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Institute for Nano‑Engineering Research (INER), Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa
2
National Centre for Nanostructured Materials, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa
3
Department of Chemical Sciences, The University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
4
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa
5
ESIEE Paris, Noisy le Grand, France
concerns. Their renewability, enormous availability, sustainability, capacity and potential for transmutation into various kinds of chemical compounds, far exceeding those derived from petroleu
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