Chemical resources from plants

The chemical industry is a raw material- and energy-intensive industry. Due to the scarcity of fossil resources, steadily increasing oil prices, and a need to reduce greenhouse gases, renewable resources from plants will be an increasingly important issue for the industry over the coming years. Germany, fourth in the world in... 

Starch and cellulose are potentially important renewable resources for chemical production. Glucose (a component of starch) is relatively easy to obtain from plant material and is used to synthesize existing chemicals. While this is so, the production of such renewable materials, a full fife-cycle assessment of the requirements for their production suggest that much fossil-soiuced energy and material would stiU be employed in the growing, harvesting and processing of biomass. 

The reasons to use raw materials from renewable resources can be various. When a natural flavour ingredient has to be prepared, a natural raw material is essential, and natural raw materials are renewable, because they come from plants, animals or fermentation. For nature-identical flavour ingredients, a renewable raw material can be a good choice from a chemical point of view and quite often also from a cost point of view if turpentine is readily available in a country with limited or no petrochemical resources, -pinene from the renewable source is cheaper than chemically synthesised -pinene. A manufacturer chooses only for sustainable production if it is remunerative and at least as attractive as other options. 

Banks was not the only water pollution specialist who worried about these chemicals. One of California s newly established Regional Water Pollution Control Boards in 1952 forbade a Sacramento rocket-fuel plant to discharge wastes containing TCE or PCE in a manner which will permit their entry into either the ground water or the waters of the American River. 11 In early 1953, the board asked the state Department of Water Resources to help monitor any effect of chemical wastes from the plant upon ground water in the area. The investigation included TCE and PCE.12... 

Polymers derived from renewable resources (biopolymers) are broadly classified according to the method of production (1) Polymers directly extracted/ removed from natural materials (mainly plants) (e.g. polysaccharides such as starch and cellulose and proteins such as casein and wheat gluten), (2) polymers produced by "classical" chemical synthesis from renewable bio-derived monomers [e.g. poly(lactic acid), poly(glycolic acid) and their biopolyesters polymerized from lactic/glycolic acid monomers, which are produced by fermentation of carbohydrate feedstock] and (3) polymers produced by microorganisms or genetically transformed bacteria [e.g. the polyhydroxyalkanoates, mainly poly(hydroxybutyrates) and copolymers of hydroxybutyrate (HB) and hydroxyvalerate (HV)] [4]. 

Yeasts can convert sugars and other renewable substrates to lipids, which can be further processed to chemicals of higher value or via transesterification to liquid transportation fuels that are currently produced from fossil resources or plant oils [62]. 

Cellulose was defined as a chemical substance related to polysaccharides in 1838 thanks to the works of French chemist Anselme Payen, who isolated it from plant matter and determined its chemical formula (Payen, 1838). Cellulose is the most abundant organic matter on Earth. Total resources of cellulose in nature reach one trillion tons (Klemm et al., 2005). Moreover, being renewable in nature, a mass of this biopolymer increases by approximately 100 billion tons annually as a result of photobiosynthesis (Field et al., 1998). Cellulose is present in all plants and algae cellulose of the tunicin type forms the shells of certain marine creatures, and it is also synthesized by some microorganisms, for example, Gluconacetobacter xylinus. 

Biobased polymers or bioplastics, how they are often called, are chemical products made from monomers from plant- or crop-based resources. They have petrochemical equivalents with the same chemical structure and same properties against which they have to compete in the market. They can win this competition only through a lower price, tax advantages or governmental subsidies. 

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