Thermal Cracking of Sugars for the Production of Glycolaldehyde and Other Small Oxygenates.

Thermal cracking of sugars for production of glycolaldehyde, a potential renewable platform molecule, in yields up to 74 % with up to 95 % carbon recovered in the condensed product is demonstrated using glucose as the feed. The process involves spraying an aqueous sugar solution into a fluidized bed of glass beads. Continuous operation is carried out for more than 90 h with complete conversion and stable product selectivity.

Tin-containing silicates: alkali salts improve methyl lactate yield from sugars.

This study focuses on increasing the selectivity to methyl lactate from sugars using stannosilicates as heterogeneous catalyst. All group I ions are found to have a promoting effect on the resulting methyl lactate yield. Besides, the alkali ions can be added both during the preparation of the catalyst or directly to the solvent mixture to achieve the highest reported yield of methyl lactate (ca.