Selective and Scalable Synthesis of Sugar Alcohols by Homogeneous Asymmetric Hydrogenation of Unprotected Ketoses

Sugar alcohols are of great importance for the food industry and are promising building blocks for bio-based polymers. Industrially, they are produced by heterogeneous hydrogenation of sugars with H₂ , usually with none to low stereoselectivities. Now, we present a homogeneous system based on commercially available components, which not only increases the overall yield, but also allows a wide range of unprotected ketoses to be diastereoselectively hydrogenated. Furthermore, the system is reliable on a multi-gram scale allowing sugar alcohols to be isolated in large quantities at high atom economy.