Page 104 - Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

Microbial-derived natural bioproducts for a sustainable environment 77

Economical welfare seemed promising for alginate and cellulose applications.
Human health toxicity assessed using LCA found that only PHA production
resulted in higher toxic substance emissions to the environment while alginate was
the least.
The dominant contributor to the environmental burden of the biopolymer perfor-
mance has been the large requirement for energy and water. Biopolymers with tech-
nology improvements and improved cost analysis statistics can make the economy
in favor of them and be par with the petroleum plastics. More studies concerning
and assessing the life-cycle impact bio-based polymers especially EPS as it is being
commercially widely used need to be studied. The application of LCA in develop-
ing countries is more important than in developed countries as it will allow these
countries to include environmental sustainability to their socioeconomic develop-
ment and keep check on the production of green chemicals and the resource
consumption.

3.7 Conclusion

Bacterial biopolymers, such as PHA and EPS, are emerging as important industrial
polymeric materials that are cheap, biodegradable with minimum wastage, and
most importantly are being produced using renewable sources or agro-industrial
wastes, which make them at par with the petrochemical polymers whose feedstocks
derived from fossil fuels. To reduce pollutants and waste disposal, biorefinery con-
cepts are getting materialized that is based on the biovalorization of nutrients, pollu-
tants, and waste materials into value-added products and bioenergy through the
high-performing bacterial machinery that feeds on them. In this context, along with
the environmental factors, the genetic make-up and the enzyme regulation of the
bacteria will aim in helping the increased production of these biopolymers to indus-
trial scale as well as making them commercially more applicable and available.
Biotechnological innovations, such as genetic manipulation, have also played an
important role. Since biopolymers are relatively new to the global market, LCA
studies might help them to be environmentally and economically sound but still
there is a room for lots of improvements in technology to make them more viable
and eco-sustainable.

References

Abe, H., Doi, Y., Aoki, H., Akehata, T., 1998. Solid-state structures and enzymatic degrad-
abilities for melt-crystallized films of copolymers of (R)-3-hydroxybutyric acid with dif-
ferent hydroxyalkanoic acids. Macromolecules. 31 (6), 1791 1797.
Akiyama, M., Tsuge, T., Doi, Y., 2003. Environmental life cycle comparison of polyhydrox-
yalkanoates produced from renewable carbon resources by bacterial fermentation.
Polym. Degrad. Stab. 80 (1), 183 194.