A review on commercial-scale high-value products that can be produced alongside cellulosic ethanol

Abstract

The demand for fossil derivate fuels and chemicals has increased, augmenting concerns on climate change, global economic stability, and sustainability on fossil resources. Therefore, the production of fuels and chemicals from alternative and renewable resources has attracted considerable and growing attention. Ethanol is a promising biofuel that can reduce the consumption of gasoline in the transportation sector and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Lignocellulosic biomass is a promising feedstock to produce bioethanol (cellulosic ethanol) because of its abundance and low cost. Since the conversion of lignocellulose to ethanol is complex and expensive, the cellulosic ethanol price cannot compete with those of the fossil derivate fuels. A promising strategy to lower the production cost of cellulosic ethanol is developing a biorefinery which produces ethanol and other high-value chemicals from lignocellulose. The selection of such chemicals is difficult because there are hundreds of products that can be produced from lignocellulose. Multiple reviews and reports have described a small group of lignocellulose derivate compounds that have the potential to be commercialized. Some of these products are in the bench scale and require extensive research and time before they can be industrially produced. This review examines chemicals and materials with a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of at least 8, which have reached a commercial scale and could be shortly or immediately integrated into a cellulosic ethanol process.

A Review of the Biotechnological Production of Methacrylic Acid

“…With maximal yields of 0.63g/g, sugar costs of less than $0.32/kg ($0.145/lb) would still be needed for biobased routes to have feedstock costs comparable to newer ethylene based petrochemical processes. Sugar costs are a challenge in the bioeconomy in general, particularly for biobased commodities and especially for biofuels (Chen et al, 2013;NREL, 2013;Taylor et al, 2015;Rosales-Calderon and Arantes, 2019). These costs may well be achievable with second generation cellulosic based sugars as technologies for their production mature (Youngs and Somerville, 2012;Kühner, 2013;Liu et al, 2019).…”

Strategies for the production of biochemicals in bioenergy crops

“…One appealing purpose of bioenergy crops is the deconstruction of their biomass into aromatics and simple sugars for downstream conversion into bioproducts. This strategy has been put forward for the environmentally sustainable production of fuels and chemicals currently derived from petroleum refining [1]. However, several challenges still need to be overcome to render bio-based products cost-competitive vis-à-vis their petroleum-based counterparts.…”

Synthetic Biology Applied to Carbon Conservative and Carbon Dioxide Recycling Pathways

“…These issues are now becoming critical for the human being, which urged the scientific community to find solutions to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels that should eventually change our life style. Biofuels and more generally biorefinery have emerged as promising solution whose purpose is to exploit microorganisms as cell factories to convert non-edible but renewable carbon sources such as lignocellulosic sugars into bioethanol as alternative energy (Duwe et al, 2019;Rosales-Calderon and Arantes, 2019) or into commodity chemicals that can replace those obtained from petrochemistry (Clark et al, 2012;Chen and Dou, 2016;Singhvi and Gokhale, 2019). In spite of the apparent sustainability of this solution, the use of chemoorganotrophic microbes such as yeast or E. coli present a caveat, as CO 2 is released during the process of carbon metabolism (Figure 1).…”