Greenness Assessment and Synthesis for the Bio-Based Production of the Solvent 2,2,5,5-Tetramethyloxolane (TMO)

Fergal Byrne, James Hanley Clark, Carlo Angelici , Ed de Jong, Thomas James Farmer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

2,2,5,5-tetramethyloxolane (TMO) has recently been identified and demonstrated as a safer solvent to replace toluene, THF, and hydrocarbons in a handful of applications. Herein, several bio-based routes to TMO are presented and assessed for greenness, assisted by the CHEM21 Metrics Toolkit and BioLogicTool plots. Using glucose as a common starting point, two chemocatalytic routes and two biochemical routes to TMO were identified and the pathways compared using the aforementioned tools. In addition, bio-based TMO was synthesised via one of these routes; from methyl levulinate supplied by Avantium, a by-product of the sugar dehydration step during the production of 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid. First, methyl levulinate underwent triple methylation using methyl magnesium chloride (MeMgCl) to yield 2,5-dimethylhexane-2,5-diol (DHL) in high yields of 89.7%. Then DHL was converted to high purity TMO (>98.5%) by cyclodehydration using H-BEA zeolites based on the previously reported approach. Bio-based content of this TMO was confirmed by ASTM D6866-20 Method B and found to have 64% bio-based carbon, well above the threshold of 25% set by CEN/TC 411 standards and matching the anticipated content. This study represents the first demonstration of a bio-based synthesis of TMO and confirmation of bio-content by accepted standards.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)392-406
JournalSustainable Chemistry
Volume2
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jul 2021

Keywords

  • Bio-based solvents
  • Green metrics
  • Solvent substitution
  • Platform molecules
  • safer solvents

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