Acrylic acid global production

Lactic acid (LA) is one of the top carbohydrate-derived chemicals and it was recently included in BozeU and Petersen s revised selecticai of the top ten sugar-based chemicals [10, 24]. The conversion of carbohydrates into LA via anaerobic fermentation has been known for ages [25]. The first industrial fermentation was developed by A. Boehringer in 1895 and at the present time the global installed production capacity is estimated at 0.5 Mton year [10, 26, 27]. The current fermentation process and its issues will be critically discussed in Sect. 3 in light of the major application of LA today, i.e., as monomer for commercial bioplastic PLA [28]. Besides being used for polyester synthesis, LA is seriously considered as a platform chemical for the synthesis of a diverse range of chemicals such as pyruvic acid, 2,3-pentanedione, and acrylic acid [10, 29]. 

For its relevance, propene is one of the most important olefins. Propene is obtained mainly from naphtha steam cracking as a coproduct with ethene, and also as a coproduct from fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) units at refineries. Relatively small amounts are produced by propane dehydrogenation and by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Because of the strong global demand for polypropene, acrylonitrile, 0x0 alcohol, and acrylic acid products, present propene supply from conventional sources cannot fulfill the market needs. An alternative route to propene is by applying the metathesis reaction for the conversion of a mixture of ethene and 2-butene into propene (Equation [16.2]). 

Global propylene demand is about SOmillion tons. It is mainly used in the production of polypropylene (60% of propylene demand), and it is consumed for the production of propylene oxide, acrylontrile, acrylic acid, and butanol. Different methods are available for the production of bio-based propylene. 

Acrylates and their downstream products are manufactured globally on a multimillion ton level as they are ubiquitous in daily hfe as hygiene products, coatings, adhesives, and food preservatives. Sodium acrylate is the most important industrial acryhc acid salt and is used as monomer for superabsorbent polymers. The combined thermodynamic need and market demand for the salt instead of the free acid, made sodium acrylate an ideal target molecule for our investigation. 

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