Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering

Technologies Applied for the Production of Biorenewable Chemicals

Song Han^* Department of Biochemistry, University of Texas, Texas, USA
^*Correspondence: Song Han, Department of Biochemistry, University of Texas, Texas, USA, Email:

Received: 02-Nov-2022, Manuscript No. JACE-22-19147; Editor assigned: 07-Nov-2022, Pre QC No. JACE-22-19147 (PQ); Reviewed: 22-Nov-2022, QC No. JACE-22-19147; Revised: 28-Nov-2022, Manuscript No. JACE-22-19147 (R); Published: 06-Dec-2022, DOI: 10.35248/2090-4568.22.12.258

Description

The chemical industry is currently reliant on a historically lowcost, petroleum-based carbon feedstock that produces a small collection of platform chemicals from which highly efficient chemical conversions lead to the production of a wide range of chemical products. A number of factors have recently come together to provide impetus to investigate alternative renewable carbon sources. The potential impact on the chemical industry of shifting from nonrenewable carbon sources to renewable carbon sources is discussed here. This shift in chemical production from biological carbon sources will allow the biological research community to contribute fundamental knowledge about carbon metabolism and regulation. We discuss whether fundamental biological research into metabolic processes at a holistic level, enabled by completed genome sequences and integrated with detailed structural understanding of biocatalysts, has the potential to shift the chemical industry away from reliance on fossil-carbon feedstocks and toward biorenewable feedstocks.

The chemical industry is one of the world's largest economic sectors, with European firms dominating. The European chemical industry is highly developed, but the introduction of new technologies, such as biocatalysis, which is discussed here still continues. This opens up new market segments and product opportunities in analytical and synthetic applications. Recent biocatalysis reviews have focused on various topics such as enzyme classes, specific features of biocatalysts, biocatalyst optimization, and selected aspects of bioprocesses.

This Concept discusses the possibilities for establishing a renewable chemicals industry that uses renewable resources as the primary feedstock rather than fossil resources. Such biomass utilisation has the potential to be both economically and environmentally beneficial. Simple and educational tools are introduced to provide preliminary estimates of which chemical processes may be viable. Specifically, value chains for fossil and renewable fuels are used to indicate where renewable feedstocks can be optimally valorized. In addition, C factors are introduced that specify the amount of CO₂ produced per kilogram of desired product to demonstrate which processes use renewable resources most effectively reduce CO₂ emissions. The path to a renewable chemicals industry will almost certainly involve the close integration of biocatalytic and conventional catalytic processes in order to achieve cost-effective and environmentally friendly processes.

The conversion of glycerol into value-added compounds has received attention recently due to its distinct structure, properties, and bioavailability. A thorough review and critical analysis of the catalytic and electrochemical oxidation of glycerol into common compounds, with applications to the food, polymer, and pharmaceutical sectors, are provided in this work. The fabrication of the catalysts using several synthetic techniques (such as impregnation, sol-immobilization, incipient wetness, and deposition precipitation) is described. On carbon black, activated carbon, graphene, single- or multiwall carbon nanotubes, layered-double hydroxides, metal oxides, and polymers, the catalytic performance of mono-, bi-, multi-, and non-metal supported catalysts is assessed. By adjusting the nature, composition, and structure of the electro-catalyst as well as the electrode voltage, electro-chemical oxidation can be controlled for high product selectivity, unlike homogenous and heterogeneous catalytic processes. The final objective in this subject may be to combine electro-chemical glycerol oxidation with oxygen or water reduction process in full- and electrolysiscells, respectively. When compared to current procedures, the simultaneous generation of value-added chemicals and electrical energy would offer considerable economic and environmental benefits.

Conclusion

The metabolic pathway that produces linear alkyl chains from simple acids, chiefly acetate, to create polyketides and fatty acids was used to illustrate this idea, although isoprenoid biosynthesis is another metabolic process that provides a comparable idea.

Isoprene, a five-carbon branching molecule, serves as the primary building block in the isoprenoid pathway. This pathway produces compounds with five carbon atoms, such as monoterpenoids (C10), sesquiterpenoids (C15), and diterpenoids (C20), up to the polyterpenoid, natural rubber.

Research on both of these routes has been and is still heavily centred on the pharmacological effects of several of these compounds (e.g. the isoprenoid based statins and polyketide antibiotics). However, these metabolic processes also provide approaches for the growth of a biorenewable chemical industry.