Page 163 - Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

A Biorefinery approach towards 6

development of renewable
platform chemicals from

sustainable biomass

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Gurunathan Baskar , R. Aiswarya , G. Kalavathy , Ashok Pandey ,
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Edgard Gnansounou , Jegannathan Kenthorai Raman and
R. Praveen Kumar 4
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Department of Biotechnology, St. Joseph’s College of Engineering, Chennai, India,
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Centre for Innovation and Translational Research, CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology
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Research (CSIR-IITR), Lucknow, India, Bioenergy and Energy Planning Research Group,
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Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, Department of
Biotechnology, Arunai Engineering College, Tiruvannamalai, India
6.1 Introduction

The extensive utilization of cheap fossil resources and increase in the price of crude
oil have brought significant changes toward the establishment of sustainable
resources to meet our energy and material needs. This situation has created a wide
space for alternative energy platform including wind, nuclear, chemicals, and water
from biomass. The US Department of Energy has listed various promising bio-
based platform molecules that have got significant value in the new era of bio-
based chemical industry (Bozell and Petersen, 2010). The biomass-based routes for
the production of bulk chemicals have accompanied a phenomenal growth in recent
years. The progressive transition has recorded about 10% 15% of fossil-based bulk
chemicals replaced by biomass-based chemicals. The shift from petroleum-based
products to renewable biomass resources plays a significant role in the development
of sustainable economy and effective management of environment pollutions
(Sillanp¨ a¨ a and Ncibi, 2017; Fritsche and Iriarte, 2014). The market potential and
regulation constraints are the driving forces for the establishment of bio-based plat-
form chemicals (Dornburg et al., 2008; Van Haveren et al., 2007; Hill, 2007).
Various investigations delineated the importance of biomasses, as they are the only
reliable source for carbon-based chemicals. The economic opportunities for bio-
sourced chemical products are gaining wide consideration than fuel industry due to
fractional requirement of biomass (Lee et al., 2011a,b). The global market of
bio-based chemicals is expected to show drastic changes in few years such as that
of biofuels used for the transportation sector. The chemicals derived from biomass

Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818996-2.00006-5
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