An effective visible-light driven fumarate production from pyruvate and gaseous CO 2 by cationic water-soluble zinc porphyrin based-photocatalytic system with malate dehydrogenase and fumarase was developed.
Fumaric acid is a useful unsaturated dicarboxylic acid that serves as a precursor for the biodegradable plastics poly(butylene succinate) and poly(propylene fumarate). Currently, fumaric acid is mainly synthesised from petroleum resources such as benzene. It is therefore desirable to develop methods to produce fumaric acid from renewable resources such as those derived from biomass. In this work, an effective visible-light driven fumarate production from gaseous CO 2 and pyruvate with the system consisting of triethanolamine, cationic water-soluble zinc porphyrin, zinc tetrakis(4- N, N, N-trimethylaminophenyl)porphyrin, pentamethylcyclopentadienyl coordinated rhodium( iii) 2,2′-bipyridyl complex, NAD +, malate dehydrogenase (NAD +-dependent oxaloacetate-decarboxylating) and fumarase was developed.