Electrochemical Deoxygenation: A Green Tool for Functional Molecule Diversification, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The recent serge on growing global energy demand and rapid depletion of fossil fuels have emphasised the urgent need for sustainable chemical processes built on renewable feedstocks like biomass. Rich in oxygen-containing groups, such as, alcohols, aldehydes, and ketones; biomass offers a valuable platform for producing hydrocarbons through direct deoxygenation. Conventional deoxygenation methods, often suffer from poor atom economy, the use of hazardous reagents, and excessive waste generation. In contrast, electrochemical deoxygenation has emerged as a greener, highly selective and more controllable approach, allowing selective C–O bond activation under mild, redox-tunable conditions without stoichiometric additives. This review explores recent progress (2022-2025) on electrochemical deoxygenation and deoxyfunctionalization of various oxo-chemicals, highlighting their promise for C–C and C–X bond formation, and biomass valorization for speciality chemicals. Notably, various approaches for late stage functionalizations and sustainable synthesis of value-added molecules or bio-active drugs will be considered.