Sweet and Sustainable: Teaching the Biorefinery Concept through Biobased Gelator Synthesis

Undergraduate curricula have increasingly incorporated sustainable and environmentally friendly approaches in the laboratory. Learning outcomes have emphasized the importance of the principles of green chemistry, but experiments may fail to impress upon the students that large-scale conversions of biomass into a spectrum of value-added products would have a huge impact on a sustainable future. With a lecture and two-session experimental biocatalytic synthesis of functional molecular gelators, students can explore real-world applications of chemistry and become aware of the biorefinery concept.