In the permanent research on sustainable processes, chemists are now looking for clean, safe and simple processes for producing chemicals.
Following the Green Chemistry principles established 25 years ago, each step in the procedure deserves to be studied in pursuit of these greener requirements.
- The use of renewable substrates is important for facing the depletion of fossil resources. Biomass is thus an important renewable source that has to be studied. Indeed, many platform molecules can be obtained from this resource and represent a short-carbon-cycle alternative.
- Energy savings have to be pursued. Catalysis is, in this respect, an interesting aspect in terms of gains in energy consumption. These energy gains are not to be neglected.
- Safer processes have to be found. Organic solvent-free processes are interesting solvent-sober protocols since they diminish some of the hazards involved due to the handling of organic solvents.
This work will present recent results concerning the use of polyoxometalates (POMs) grafted onto a solid support and their use as catalysts to valorize biomass. These POMs contained molybdenum and vanadium metals.
Simple protocols for the synthesis of these catalytic materials and their characterisation will be presented. Improvements compared to the literature will be emphasised.
Valuable natural substrates such as terpenes will be presented, and mechanistic conclusions will be given.