Producing Bio-Based Bulk Chemicals Using Industrial Biotechnology Saves Energy and Combats Climate Change

Abstract

The production of bulk chemicals from biomass can make a significant contribution to solving two of the most urgent environmental problems: climate change and depletion of fossil energy. We analyzed current and future technology routes leading to 15 bulk chemicals using industrial biotechnology and calculated their CO 2 emissions and fossil energy use. Savings of more than 100% in nonrenewable energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are already possible with current state of the art biotechnology. Substantial further savings are possible for the future by improved fermentation and downstream processing. Worldwide CO 2 savings in the range of 500-1000 million tons per year are possible using future technology. Industrial biotechnology hence offers excellent opportunities for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing dependence on fossil energy sources and therefore has the potential to make inroads into the existing chemical industry.

Twisting biomaterials around your little finger: environmental impacts of bio-based wrappings

“…A growing number of environmental assessments of bio-materials include land use in their analyses (see Dornburg et al 2003;Hermann et al 2007;Kim and Dale 2005b) and methodological work is under way (see e.g. Jolliet et al 2003;Kloverpris et al 2008;Mila i Canals et al 2007) but has not yet established one single accepted methodology in terms of how different types of land use should be compared.…”

“…In the context of long-term emission targets, one of the important issues is to what extent bio-based materials score better in environmental terms compared to petrochemical polymers. Several studies have already been carried out regarding the environmental advantages or disadvantages of using novel biopolymers such as PLA (Vink et al 2003;Vink et al 2007), bio-based polyethylene (Hermann et al 2007) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (Kim and Dale 2005a), concluding that there are environmental advantages for some bio-based materials and that other materials could become advantageous if technologies used in their production improve and progress. So far, these studies have focussed on comparing quantities of materials (e.g.…”

Can feedstock production for biofuels be sustainable in California?

“…Many analyses indicate that rather than grains or seeds, crop residues and purpose-grown crops that produce large amounts of biomass per acre will be more efficient and have the greatest environmental benefits (Schmer et al 2008;Adler et al 2007 Biomass may also be an efficient petroleum substitute for uses other than transportation fuel. For example, Hermann et al (2007) and Ragauskas et al (2006) reported that bio-based bulk organic chemicals offer clear environmental and energetic advantages compared to petroleum as a feedstock. This comes in part from avoiding expensive oxygenation and catalytic steps to convert petroleum into alcohols, carboxylic acids and esters.…”

Bioproduction of lauryl lactone and 4-vinyl guaiacol as value-added chemicals in two-phase biotransformation systems

“…Technological advances in biocatalyst discovery, bioprocess optimization, and product recovery are important considerations for the impact of industrial or white biotechnology that promotes a wider use of microbial or bio-based production of goods and services (Hermann and Patel 2007;Caesar 2008). In this study, we carried out whole-cell biocatalysis in organic-aqueous two-phase partitioning bioreactors (TPPB) systems to test the feasibility of bioproduction of two water-insoluble products.…”