Fossil oil depletion imposes a societal driven shift to non-edible biomass as a renewable
feedstock for chemicals. Wood is among the most abundant carbon sources on earth, and is
ideal to address this challenge. Wood contains (hemi)cellulose (carbohydrates) and lignin, a
polymeric network of arenes. Biorefineries mostly focus on the former, using lignin only as low
value fuel. This project's ambitious aim is to transform lignin into high-value chemicals and
polymers, starting with the very challenging selective depolymerization of lignin. In
KULeuven's ‘lignin-first' concept, even before carbohydrate valorization, wood is treated in a
selective way to recover just 4 biobased aromatic molecules in high yield. Next, selective
catalytic (de)functionalization of the 4 molecules will lead to catechol and pyrogallol.
Innovative synthetic methods (aminations, reductions, C(sp2)-O cross-coupling and
C(sp2/sp3)-H functionalization) will transform these into important chemicals (substituted
phenols, anilines etc). Finally, biobased chemicals are coupled with CO2 to form valuable
functional polymers. Modelling, e.g. via Advanced Molecular Dynamics will allow to rationalize
and even predict reactivity and selectivity in realistic operating conditions, lending strong
support to the development of new concepts for transformation of aromatics.