Perspectives on chemicals from renewable resources

Abstract

Faced with increasing global demand for raw materials to meet the needs of transportation fuels, energy and chemical production coupled with depleting fossil reserves, fluctuating oil prices and ecological impact associated with CO2 emissions, there has been heightened awareness for the need to utilise alternative and sustainable resources and production methods. There have been many reports on the use of biomass for the production of chemical products. These have generally focused on the use of fatty acids, lignin and most significantly on the use of carbohydrates as raw materials. In the later case there have been a number of reports on the transformation of sugars by chemicals means but the majority of transformations involve fermentation and other biotechnological processes resulting in the formation of new and traditional chemicals used in industry. Less well explored is the use of proteins and amino acids in industry. Here it is reported that protein and amino acid rest streams generated from processes such as the production of industrial starch, can be used as a potential raw material for the production of industrial products. With the aid of biotechnology, these complex rest streams may be refined to products with a more defined composition aiding the isolation of desired amino acids which can be used to produce an array of industrially significant products. More specifically it is described that Protamylasse ®, generated from starch production, can be used as a media for the production of cyanophycin polymer which can be utilised as a source of arginine and aspartic acid for the production of compounds such as 1,4-butanediamine and succinic acid. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.