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molecule for the production of levulinic acid (LA), 2,5-furan dicarboxylic acid
(FDCA), 2,5-diformylfuran, dihydroxymethylfuran, and 5-hydroxy-4-keto-2-penta-
noic acid (Rosatella et al., 2011).

19.3.9 3-Hydroxybutyrolactone
3-Hydroxybutyrolactone (3-HBL) is a building block produced from sugar that
can be formulated into various high-value, bio-based chemicals or materials.
There are very few reports of naturally occuring biosynthetic pathways for
synthesizing this molecule or its hydrolyzed form i.e. 3,4-dihydroxybutyric acid.
3-Hydroxybutyrolactone has huge applications in pharmaceutical industry and is
used in the synthesis of the statin class of cholesterol-reducing drugs such as
Crestor and Lipitor, antibiotics such as Zyvox, and the antihyperlipidemic drugs
such as Zetia and HIV inhibitors (Lee and Park, 2009; Kim et al., 1995).

19.4 Production of platform chemicals from food waste

Production of succinic acid is done industrially by microorganisms such as
Actinobacillus succinogenes and some genetically modified Escherichia coli strains
which can produce up to 150 g/L aided by glucose feeding. In a report by Dessie
et al. (2018), fruit and vegetable wastes were hydrolyzed enzymatically to obtain a
mixture of sugars such as glucose and fructose. Subsequent fermentation of these
sugars was performed by A. succinogenes to produce 1.18 g of succinic acid per g
of sugar. Waste generated from citrus peel has also been used after acid hydrolysis
for the production of succinic acid up to 6.13 g/L (Patsalou et al., 2017).
Production of fumaric acid from biomass resources has been researched exten-
sively in the last few years. Production of fumaric acid from apple pomace ultrafil-
tration sludge using fungal strain Rhizopus oryzae via SmF and SSF has been
reported. In a report by Liu et al. (2016), 32.68 g/L fumaric acid could be obtained
when liquid part of the food waste was used as a production medium, which was
higher than the yield obtained by using a common glucose medium (Liu et al.,
2016). The solid part of the food waste was also able to give a yield of 31.26 g/L
when extra glucose was added to the media.
Food waste rich in starch, cellulose, and saccharides has been reported for being
a good raw material for the production of starch and cellulose which can subse-
quently be dehydrated to HMF and LA, two important platform chemicals in biore-
fineries that can be converted into other furans, acids, e-caprolactam, and several
lactones. Bread waste is one of the most common food wastes worldwide and rich
in starch that has proven applicability for HMF production (Yu et al., 2017). Cao
et al. reported the production of HMF from starch-rich food waste such as bread.
After the optimization of reaction conditions the yield of HMF was 30.4 C mol%
(i.e., 22 wt% of bread waste) when the mixture of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)/deio-

nized water at 180 C was used for 20 min (Cao et al., 2018).