Recent Advances in the Deoxydehydration of Vicinal Diols and Polyols

Deoxydehydration (DODH) is one of the most promising tools to reduce the oxygen content of biomass (sugars and polyols) and provide analogues of platform chemicals that are derived from fossil resources. This reaction converts a vicinal diol into an alkene and is typically catalyzed by high-oxidation-state metal-oxo compounds in the presence of a stoichiometric reductant, with examples of both homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. This mini-review will highlight the developments in this field over the past 5 years and focus on efforts to solve the problems that currently prevent DODH being performed on a commercial scale, including the nature of the reductant, substrate scope and selectivity, and catalyst recovery and expense.