Bioconversion of biomass waste into high value chemicals

Highlights

• This review explores the potential of using a wide range of biomass wastes.

• Biomass waste provides the potential for the production of useful chemical platforms.

• Biomass waste can be used for the production of various value-added chemicals.

• Enzyme is critically important for the conversion of biomass into valuable products.

Abstract

Dwindling petroleum resources and increasing environmental concerns have stimulated the production of platform chemicals via biochemical processes through the use of renewable carbon sources. Various types of biomass wastes, which are biodegradable and vastly underutilized, are generated worldwide in huge quantities. They contain diverse chemical constituents, which may serve as starting points for the manufacture of a wide range of valuable bio-derived platform chemicals, intermediates, or end products via different conversion pathways. The valorization of inexpensive, abundantly available, and renewable biomass waste could provide significant benefits in response to increasing fossil fuel demands and manufacturing costs, as well as emerging environmental concerns. This review explores the potential for the use of available biomass waste to produce important chemicals, such as monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, biofuels, bioactive molecules, nanocellulose, and lignin, with a focus on commercially viable technologies.

ced (Muralikrishna and Manickam, 2017). Approximately 100 billion metric tons of biomass waste are generated annually in the world (TerraGreen, 2019). Biomass waste encompasses a wide range of materials that include forestry residues, agricultural wastes, fruit processing waste, and waste from the processing of other food. These types of waste can cause serious health or environmental problems if they are not disposed of properly (Alatzas et al., 2019). Therefore, developing an ecofriendly and effective strategy for using and managing various types of biomass waste is critical. Enzymatic conversion is considered an environment-friendly technology that may potentially help to completely replace or reduce the usage of hazardous chemicals in industrial processes. Enzymatic conversion offers the potential for higher yields, higher selectivity, and lower energy costs, and generates fewer inhibitory byproducts. Furthermore, enzymes are critically important to the decomposition of biomass into its primary constituents, and can be applied to the downstream transformation of biomass components into building blocks or commodity chemicals.

Biomass waste is currently seen as a low-value material and is largely underutilized. However, its role as a resource useful for creating value-added outcomes has become increasingly recognized (Koutinas et al., 2014). Biomass waste contains higher fraction of oxygen and lower percentage of hydrogen and carbon compared with petroleum resources, and biomass biorefineries can likely produce more families of chemicals than petroleum-based manufacturing can (Isikgor and Becer, 2015). Efficient development of biomass waste into innovative products can address environmental concerns, reduce dependence on petroleum resources, and increase economic efficiency.

Today, the sustainable production of chemicals and biopolymers depends entirely on renewable carbon; therefore, biomass waste has been introduced as a resource dedicated to creating value-added products. Valorization of biomass waste is based on the use of chemical constituents such as carbohydrate and non-carbohydrate fractions of biomass to produce commercially viable products (Fig. 1). It has also been developed in response to increasing raw material demand, production cost, and environmental pollution. This review presents recent developments and future trends in the valorization of biomass waste derived from agricultural, forestry, and industrial activities to produce important monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, biofuels, bioactive molecules, nanocellulose, and lignin. Recently developed technologies associated with the valorization of biomass waste are also discussed.

Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960852419316165