This sounds amazing, but reading about various awesome breakthroughs has made me a bit cynical since there always is some sort of catch.
Does anyone know any limitations to this method which would make it difficult to scale?
One reason why crude oil, a fuel source, is also such a good chemical feedstock is that it contains a lot of complex, high-energy hydrocarbons. These are the kinds of complicated molecules that require a lot of energy input to form, and hence release lots of energy when burned. Reversing this process and turning simple carbohydrates plus carbon dioxide into complex carbohydrates is usually a highly endothermic reaction.
Does anyone have access to the actual papers?
Georgina L. Gregory, Gabriele Kociok-Köhn and Antoine Buchard
“Polymers from sugars and CO2: ring-opening polymerisation and copolymerisation of cyclic carbonates derived from 2-deoxy-D-ribose”
DOI: 10.1039/C7PY00236J Polymer Chemistry, 2017, 8, 2093-2104
Georgina L. Gregory, Elizabeth M. Hierons, Gabriele Kociok-Köhn, Ram I. Sharma and Antoine Buchard
“CO2-Driven stereochemical inversion of sugars to create thymidine-based polycarbonates by ring-opening polymerisation”
DOI: 10.1039/C7PY00118E Polymer Chemistry, 2017, 8, 1714-1721
Georgina L. Gregory, Liliana M. Jenisch, Bethan Charles, Gabriele Kociok-Köhn, and Antoine Buchard
“Polymers from Sugars and CO2: Synthesis and Polymerization of a d-Mannose-Based Cyclic Carbonate”
DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b01492 Macromolecules, 2016, 49, 7165-7169I had a look around, and the papers aren't on any preprint servers etc. I guess we could violate copyrights, but a better solution might be that someone emails George and asks if she can get the preprints posted somewhere.
Edit: there's a preprint of the 2015 paper here: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/44557/