Fergal Patrick Byrne

Addible Ltd

Driven by legislation and evolving attitudes towards environmental issues, establishing green solvents for extractions, separations, formulations and reaction chemistry has become an increasingly important area of research. Several general purpose solvent selection guides have now been published with the aim to reduce use of the most hazardous solv...

An inherently non-peroxide forming ether solvent, 2,2,5,5-tetramethyltetrahydrofuran (2,2,5,5-tetramethyloxolane), has been synthesized from readily available and potentially renewable feedstocks, and its solvation properties have been tested. Unlike traditional ethers, its absence of a proton at the alpha-position to the oxygen of the ether elimin...

The invention relates to a process for the preparation of 2,2,5,5- tetramethyltetrahydrofuran (TMTHF) comprising contacting a TMTHF precursor with a solid catalyst, wherein the TMTHF precursor is 2,5-dimethylhexane-2,5-diol and/or 2,5-dimethyl-4- hexen-2-ol, and wherein the solid catalyst is a beta zeolite. It also relates to the use of a beta zeol...

A “top down” approach to the development of sustainable, greener, low-polarity solvents is presented. Methyl butyrate, ethyl isobutyrate, methyl pivalate and pinacolone were identified as potential target solvents from trends in Hansen solubility parameters and known physical properties. Solubility, flammability and physical properties were determi...

Three dipolar aprotic solvents were designed to possess high dipolarity and low toxicity: N , N , N ’, N ’‐tetrabutylsuccindiamide (TBSA), N , N ’‐diethyl‐ N , N ’‐dibutylsuccindiamide (EBSA), N , N ’‐dimethyl‐ N , N ’‐dibutylsuccindiamide (MBSA). They were synthesized catalytically using a K60 silica catalyst in a solventless system. Their water‐i...

The bio-derived platform molecule levoglucosenone (LGO, 1), which is the precursor to the green solvent Cyrene® (2), has been converted, at multi-gram scale, into its pseudo-enantiomer (iso-LGO, 2) and then reduced to iso-Cyrene (4). A less effective synthesis of this last compound from D-glucose is also described. Various physicochemical as well a...

Methylation of acetoin with dimethyl carbonate was performed in a sustainable one-step process, with improved process mass intensity (PMI) and atom economy compared to previously published methods. The resulting product, 3-methoxybutan-2-one (MO) was successfully evaluated as a bio-based solvent, while both Kamlet–Taft solvatochromic parameters and...

2,2,5,5-tetramethyloxolane (TMO) has recently been identified and demonstrated as a safer solvent to replace toluene, THF, and hydrocarbons in a handful of applications. Herein, several bio-based routes to TMO are presented and assessed for greenness, assisted by the CHEM21 Metrics Toolkit and BioLogicTool plots. Using glucose as a common starting...

Following the environmental problems caused by non-degradable plastics there is a need to synthesise greener and more sustainable polymers. In this work we describe, for the first time, the facile enzyme-catalysed synthesis of linear polyesters using dimethyl malonate as the diester. These polymers, containing a different aliphatic diol component (...

The enzymatic synthesis of polyesters in solventless systems is an environmentally friendly and sustainable method for synthetizing bio-derived materials. Despite the greenness of the technique, in most cases only short oligoesters are obtained, with limited practical applications or requiring further chemical processing for their elongation. In th...

2,2,5,5-tetramethyloxolane [previously published as 2,2,5,5-tetramethyltetrahydrofuran (TMTHF)] has recently been demonstrated as a greener and cleaner alternative to toluene in several applications. Assessing similarities in properties of toluene and 2,2,5,5-tetramethyloxolane is crucial for establishing this molecules potential to replace traditi...

With increased awareness of environmental issues caused by traditional petrochemical processes, both academia and industry are making enormous efforts towards the development of sustainable practices using renewable biomass as a feedstock. In this work, the biocatalyzed synthesis of polyesters derived from renewable monomers was performed in safer,...

The swelling of resins (Merrifield and HypoGelTM200) in mixtures of two solvents was generally found not to vary linearly with the relative amount of each solvent in the mixture. Hansen solubility parameter (HSP) space could be used to define high, medium and low swelling regions for each resin. The variation of resin swelling with binary solvent c...

Bio-derived lipophilic polydentate chelators have been synthesized and tested for their chelating ability using a range of metal salts of Cu, Co, Ni, Fe, and Cr. These novel molecules were produced by the Michael addition reaction of 14,16-hentriacontanedione, isolated from wheat straw wax, with methyl acrylate or bio-derived dimethyl itaconate via...

The invention relates to a process for the polymerization of vinyl monomers, to a process for preparing an adhesive composition, to the adhesive composition so produced and to a pressure sensitive adhesive sheet prepared from the adhesive composition, wherein use is made of tetramethyltetrahydrofuran (TMTHF), preferably biomass-based TMTHF, as solv...

Many traditional solvents have drawbacks including sustainability and toxicity issues. Legislations such as REACH is driving the move towards less hazardous chemicals and production processes. Therefore, safer bio-based solvents need to be developed. Herein, a 10 step method has been proposed for the development of new bio-based solvents that utili...