There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Production of 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) from 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF): recent progress focusing on the chemical-catalytic routes

Facile fractionation of lignocelluloses by biomass-derived deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment for cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and lignin valorization

The critical role of lignin in lignocellulosic biomass conversion and recent pretreatment strategies: A comprehensive review.

Natural deep eutectic solvents for lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment: Recent developments, challenges and novel opportunities.

The scientific community has been seeking cost-competitive and green solvents with good dissolving capacity for the valorization of lignocellulosic biomass. At this point, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are currently emerging as a new class of promising solvents that are generally liquid eutectic mixtures formed by self-association (or hydrogen-bonding interaction) of two or three components. DESs are attractive solvents for the fractionation (or pretreatment) of lignocellulose and the valorization of lignin, owing to the high solubility of lignin in DESs. DESs are also employed as effective media for the modification of cellulose to afford functionalized cellulosic materials, such as cellulose nanocrystals. More interestingly, biomassderived carbohydrates, such as fructose, can be used as one of the constituents of DESs and then dehydrated to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural in high yield. In this review, a comprehensive summary of recent contribution of DESs to the processing of lignocellulosic biomass and its derivatives is provided. Moreover, further discussion about the challenges of the application of DESs in biomass processing is presented.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/cssc.201701012

Green processing of lignocellulosic biomass and its derivatives in deep eutectic solvents

Green process for production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural from carbohydrates with high purity in deep eutectic solvents

An effective pathway for converting carbohydrates to biofuel 5-ethoxymethylfurfural via 5-hydroxymethylfurfural with deep eutectic solvents (DESs)

Correction for ‘Green catalytic conversion of bio-based sugars to 5-chloromethyl furfural in deep eutectic solvent, catalyzed by metal chlorides’ by Miao Zuo et al., RSC Adv., 2016, 6, 27004–27007.

/pdf/green-catalytic-conversion-of-bio-based-sugars-to-5-2ics9w14s9.pdf

Miao Zuo

Papers

Green processing of lignocellulosic biomass and its derivatives in deep eutectic solvents

Green process for production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural from carbohydrates with high purity in deep eutectic solvents

An effective pathway for converting carbohydrates to biofuel 5-ethoxymethylfurfural via 5-hydroxymethylfurfural with deep eutectic solvents (DESs)

Green catalytic conversion of bio-based sugars to 5-chloromethyl furfural in deep eutectic solvent, catalyzed by metal chlorides

Effective selectivity conversion of glucose to furan chemicals in the aqueous deep eutectic solvent