A tandem Finkelstein-rearrangement–elimination reaction: a straightforward synthetic route to allyl esters

Nanofood Process Technology: Insights on How Sustainability Informs Process Design

Nanostructured products are an actively growing area for food research, but there is little information on the sustainability of processes used to make these products. In this Review, we advocate for selection of sustainable process technologies during initial stages of laboratory-scale developments of nanofoods. We show that selection is assisted by predictive sustainability assessment(s) based on conventional technologies, including exploratory ex ante and "anticipatory" life-cycle assessment. We demonstrate that sustainability assessments for conventional food process technologies can be leveraged to design nanofood process concepts and technologies. We critically review emerging nanostructured food products including encapsulated bioactive molecules and processes used to structure these foods at laboratory, pilot, and industrial scales. We apply a rational method via learning lessons from sustainability of unit operations in conventional food processing and critically apportioned lessons between emerging and conventional approaches. We conclude that this method provides a quantitative means to incorporate sustainability during process design for nanostructured foods. Findings will be of interest and benefit to a range of food researchers, engineers, and manufacturers of process equipment.

Preparation and Uses of Chlorinated Glycerol Derivatives

Crude glycerol (C3H8O3) is a major by-product of biodiesel production from vegetable oils and animal fats. The increased biodiesel production in the last two decades has forced glycerol production up and prices down. However, crude glycerol from biodiesel production is not of adequate purity for industrial uses, including food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The purification process of crude glycerol to reach the quality standards required by industry is expensive and dificult. Novel uses for crude glycerol can reduce the price of biodiesel and make it an economical alternative to diesel. Moreover, novel uses may improve environmental impact, since crude glycerol disposal is expensive and dificult. Glycerol is a versatile molecule with many potential applications in fermentation processes and synthetic chemistry. It serves as a glucose substitute in microbial growth media and as a precursor in the synthesis of a number of commercial intermediates or fine chemicals. Chlorinated derivatives of glycerol are an important class of such chemicals. The main focus of this review is the conversion of glycerol to chlorinated derivatives, such as epichlorohydrin and chlorohydrins, and their further use in the synthesis of additional downstream products. Downstream products include non-cyclic compounds with allyl, nitrile, azide and other functional groups, as well as oxazolidinones and triazoles, which are cyclic compounds derived from ephichlorohydrin and chlorohydrins. The polymers and ionic liquids, which use glycerol as an initial building block, are highlighted, as well.

Rapid approach to biobased telechelics through two one-pot thiol-ene click reactions

The application of environmentally friendly thiol-ene chemistry to the preparation of biobased telechelics is presented in this work. This methodology is based on two one-pot photoinitiated thiol-ene click processes: step-growth polymerization using a 3,6-dioxa-1,8-octanedithiol and end-group postpolymerization modification with three functional thiols: 2-mercaptoethanol, 3-mercaptopropionic acid, and 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane. We applied this approach to a potentially 100% biomass-derived monomer, allyl ester of 10-undecenoic acid (UDA). To show the generality and scope of this methodology, a series of well-defined telechelics with molecular weight ranging from 1000-3000 g/mol and hydroxyl, carboxyl, or trimethoxysilyl groups at the polymer terminus were prepared. An exhaustive (1)H NMR and MALDI-TOF MS analyses demonstrates the highly end-group fidelity of this methodology being an interesting procedure for the accelerated preparation of telechelics derived from divinyl monomers. UDA-based thelechelic diol prepared using this methodology was reacted with 4,4'-methylenebis(phenylisocyanate) and 1,4-butanediol as the chain extender to obtain multiblock poly(ester urethane).