Applications saccharide-derived chemicals

The most important, practical application of 13C-n.m.r. spectroscopy is probably the simple characterization and identification of organic compounds. Because of the simplicity of proton-decoupled carbon spectra, and the sensitivity of carbon-13 chemical-shifts towards structural changes, carbon spectra are extremely well suited for this purpose (see, for example, Ref. 84), and it is for this reason that the emphasis of the present article has been placed on presenting chemical-shift data of monosaccharides and their derivatives. Such data are also important for structural studies of oligo- and poly-saccharides,3 and for the investigation of such mixtures as those arising from mutarotation85-87 (see Section 11,4) or from other reactions.34... 

Whereas natural monomers like terpenes and sugars constitute building blocks for a limited number of macromolecular structures, associated with their own peculiar chemical features, the realm of furan polymers bears a qualitatively different connotation in that it resembles the context of petrol refinery, that is, it is open to a whole domain of monomers, whose only specificity is the fact that they all incorporate the furan heterocycle in their structure. This state of affairs stems from the fact that, as in petroleum chemistry, saccharide-based renewable resources are used to produce two first-generation furan derivatives, which constitute the substrates capable of being converted into a vast array of monomers and hence a correspondingly large number of macromolecular structures associated with materials possessing different properties and applications [34]. 

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