One strategy to reduce the costs of the production of chemicals from renewable resources consists in combining fermentation and catalysis to avoid the expensive purification of the bio-derived intermediate. This process option was evaluated using succinic acid produced from fermentation as an example. For the aqueous hydrogenation of succinic acid, the use of different homogeneous and immobilized metal complexes as well as heterogeneous clay catalysts was analyzed. For the esterification of succinic acid, a reactive extraction process was investigated with different biological and chemical catalysts. After the optimization of the reaction conditions, succinic acid could be directly esterified in an aqueous fermentation broth with the homogeneous catalyst dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid with yields up to 94 % using 1-octanol. Finally, the produced diesters could be easily separated from the reaction system.
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One strategy to reduce the costs of the production of chemicals from renewable resources consists in combining fermentation and catalysis to avoid the expensive purification of the bio-derived intermediate. This process option was evaluated using succinic acid produced from fermentation as an example. For the aqueous hydrogenation of succinic acid, the use of different homogeneous and immobilized metal complexes as well as heterogeneous clay catalysts was analyzed. For the esterification of succ...
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