UMass Amherst Chemical Engineers Discover ‘Ultraselective’
Process to Make Valuable Chemical from Biomass
Chemical engineering researchers Wei Fan, Paul Dauenhauer
and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report this week that
they’ve discovered a new chemical process to make p-xylene, an important
ingredient of common plastics, at 90 percent yield from lignocellulosic
biomass, the highest yield achieved to date. Details are in the current issue
of Green Chemistry.
As Dauenhauer explains, the chemical industry currently
produces p-xylene from more expensive petroleum, while the new process will
make the same chemical from lower-cost, renewable biomass. He and colleagues
call the process “ultraselective” because of its ability to achieve 90 percent
selectivity for the desired product. “The biomass-derived p-xylene can be mixed
with petroleum-based plastics, and consumers will not be able to tell the
difference. But manufacturers and chemical companies will be able to operate
more sustainably and at lower cost in the future because of this discovery,” he
adds.