Saccharides renewable resources

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]. 

Recently, the development of new functional materials from renewable resources such as various kinds of saccharides has received remarkable interest 1, 2, 3). Various types of synthetic polymer containing saccharides have been investigated ( , 5). There are two types of sugar-based polymers (i) sugar-containing linear polymer (ii) polymer with sugar pendant (Figure 1). 

Two striking differences distinguish the essence of this chapter from most other chapters, namely (i) the fact that the furan compounds relevant to polymer synthesis are not found as such in nature but are instead obtained from parent renewable resources and (ii) it is possible in principle to envisage a whole new realm of polymer materials based on furan monomers and furan chemistry, covering a very wide spectrum of macromolecular structures. Concerning the first point, the massive availability of saccharidic precursors and their relatively sirt5)le conversion into furan derivatives, eliminate in fact any apparent problem of absence of such natural structures. As for the second point, its unique relevance has to do with the potential perspective of a viable alternative to the present reality based on polymer chemistry derived from fossil resources. In other words, the biomass refinery concept would be applied here to the synthesis of different furan monomers, simulating the equivalent petroleum counterpart. 

Polymers from renewable resources include among the others poly-saccharides, such as cellulose, starch, chitosan, lignin and proteins, like wool, silk and gelatin, oils, and microbial poly (ester)s, such as PHAs. 

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