[CONFERENCE DE PATRICK LEGHIE] The catalytic production of chemicals from Waste bio-oils

As oil supplies dwindle and the price increases, it is essential to find new ways of making the many chemicals on which the quality of our lives depends. One approach is to use renewable resources which can be grown but being aware of the competition for land between the production of food and chemicals.

We shall show how homogeneous catalysis, carbonylation, metathesis, and reductive amination^] can be used to make difunctional esters acids, alcohols, amides and  amines for polymer formation from unpurified natural oils containing oleate residues, including Tall Oil, a side product of paper manufacture.

We shall also describe the formation of N-heterocycles by hydrogenation of some of the diesters in the presence of amines.

Cashew nut shell liquid contains interesting phenols meta substituted with an unsaturated C₁₅ chain, available at 700,000 tonnes per year. We shall described how it can be used to synthesise detergent precursors, large ring macrocycles, monomers, insect attractants and pharmaceuticals.

Contact : patrick.leghie@junia.com