Chemicals, biomass hexose feedstocks

Selected thermochemical syntheses are discussed here to show how the structural characteristics of biomass components can affect the methods chosen to manufacture a few specific commodity chemicals. The main components of biomass, the pentoses and hexoses from the polysaccharides and the lignins, lipids, and proteins, are examined as potential feedstocks. 

Carbohydrates is the most important class of chemicals in the biomass feedstock. Carbohydrates can be divided into monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. The most familiar monosaccharides are glucose, fructose, galactose and mannose (hexoses) and xylose, arabinose and ribose (pentoses) (Fig. 1). Sucrose (Fig. 3), a disaccharide of fructose and glucose, present in sugar beet and sugarcane and lactose (galactose-glucose), present in milk, are two well-known disaccharides. 

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