Valorization of Renewable Carbon Resources for Chemicals

The overuse of fossil fuels has caused an energy crisis and associated environment issues. It is desirable to utilize renewable resources for the production of chemicals. This review mainly introduces our recent work on the transformation of renewable carbon resources including the conversion of cellulose, lignin, and chitin into sustainable chemicals. Various transformation routes have been established to form value-added chemicals, and accordingly a variety of effective catalytic systems have been developed, either based on metal catalysis and/or acid-base catalysis, to enable the desired transformation.