5-Hydroxymethylfurfural and Furfural Chemistry Toward Biobased Surfactants

Abstract

The use of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), furfural, and furan as scaffolds for designing alternative surfactants is a rapidly developing research area. This Review gathers recent examples highlighting the variety of methods for grafting the necessary polar and non-polar appendages, exploiting the specific chemical reactivity of each of these platform molecules. While the furan (or tetrahydrofuran) backbone is maintained in some targeted amphiphiles, alternatives using rearranged HMF or furfural such as cyclopentanols or furanones have also been reported. This topic is an illustration of the diversification of the use of HMF and other biobased furanic platform molecules in the field of fine and specialty chemicals. The surfactants sector, which concerns some of the most largely consumed chemicals in everyday life, and still mostly produced from fossil resources, will benefit from such alternatives enabling increased renewable carbon content and structural innovation.

Keywords: 5-hydroxymethylfurfural; biomass; furans; furfural; surfactants.