Green Energy to Sustainability: Strategies for Global Industries

8Sustainable Platform Chemicals from Biomass

Ankita Juneja and Vijay Singh

Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

CHAPTER MENU

• Introduction
• 2‐Carbon
• 3‐Carbon
• 4‐Carbon
• 5‐Carbon
• 6‐Carbon
• Perspectives
• References

8.1 Introduction

With increasing concerns about environmental safety, rapid economic growth, limited fossil reserves, and volatile oil prices, there is rising interest in the production of fuel and industrial chemicals from renewable resources and biomass. Over the last several decades, significant efforts have been made to develop technologies and approaches for successful commercial scale biofuel production. Currently, the US produces approximately 15.3 billion gallons of ethanol every year, and most of it is derived from corn ( RFA 2017). To meet the supply without interfering with food sources, lignocellulosic biomass, which is abundant in nature, can play an important role. Similar to biofuel production, during the past few years, much progress has been made in the production of renewable value chemicals and biomaterials.

Starch‐ and protein‐derived products have long been available in the market, however, current efforts are focused on sustainable production of platform chemicals, which are the building blocks of several other industrial high‐value chemicals and biomaterials (Kamm 2007). It is predicted that by 2025, renewable sources would contribute about 25% of all the raw materials used in ...