Abstract

Drugs and high-value-added materials from agricultural leftovers

Author(s): Pierre Vogel

With the future exhaust of petroleum and coal that represent our raw materials for material sciences, crop protecting agents and drugs our civilization is confronted with the urgent need to find new sources of carbon containing raw materials. Vegetable biomass, generated from CO2, H2O and using sunlight as the energy source producing O2 as a subproduct, is the best alternative to oil, gas and coal. Plants have to be used to feed men. To divert them into fuel and fine chemical production cannot be done at this moment, unless new plants are found that can have a better photochemical yield for the conversion of CO2 in carbohydrates and other compounds, and would not require huge amount of water. Thus as long as one cannot grow biomass in the desert, only the left-overs (mainly straw) can be used as a sources of fuel and fine chemicals.1 For many years our laboratory has developed synthetic methodology permitting to convert furans into high value added chemicals such as drugs. Furans are inexpensive, non-toxic compounds obtained by acidic treatment of agriculture left-overs (e.g. straw).