Hydrophobic Effect Driven Esterification of Sucrose in Aqueous Medium1

Sucrose is an attractive molecule for chemistry because it is pure, abundant, inexpensive, and produced from renewable sources. Amoung its derivatives, sucrose esters are valuable targets for the chemical valorization of sugar, either as polymerizable derivatives, surfactants, or non-caloric fat substitutes.2 But although such potential commercially attractive sucrose derived molecules can be targeted, methods consistent with low-cost sucrouse diversification have still to be found. The issue of the solvent being critical, we have been interested in evaluating water as a possible solvent for some transformations of sucrose, and we report herein some preliminary results on the esterification of this sugar in basic aqueous medium.