Valorization of Chitin Biomass for the Synthesis of Nitrogenated Aromatic Compounds.

Abstract

Since the beginning of the history of the chemical industry, aromatic compounds have played an important role in the generation of high added-value chemical products derived from petroleum. In view of environmental and economic concerns, biomass has emerged as a potential raw material to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. In this context, the proposed project aims to use derivatives obtained from marine biomass, chitin - the second most abundant biopolymer in the environment - ¿¿as a source for the production of new nitrogenous aromatic compounds, considered structurally valuable and useful for the synthesis of commercial pharmaceuticals.To this end, the plan is to explore the reactivity of 3-acetamido-2-pyrone (3A2P), a chitin derivative that has great potential for generating aromatic compounds of commercial interest. Thus, the synthesis of aromatic compounds will be optimized using 3A2P as the main substrate in sequential Diels-Alder and aromatization/decarboxylation reactions. During the course of the project, facilitating technologies can be strategically employed to assess the potential of each tool to provide the desired transformations, as well as possible impacts on the selectivity of the reactions under study.