Chemicals, application 1.3- propanediol

It is important that chemical engineers master an understanding of metabolic engineering, which uses genetically modified or selected organisms to manipulate the biochemical pathways in a cell to produce a new product, to eliminate unwanted reactions, or to increase the yield of a desired product. Mathematical models have the potential to enable major advances in metabolic control. An excellent example of industrial application of metabolic engineering is the DuPont process for the conversion of com sugar into 1,3-propanediol,... 

Nager, P., Applications of 1,3-propanediol, presentation given at the CHEMSPEC Asia 91 conference, Tokyo, Japan, June 24-25, 1991, Specialty Chemicals Production, Marketing and Application. 

Propanediol and its Applications from a Fine to a Bulk Chemical 242... 

Several important examples of metabolic engineering, ranging from applications in basic chemicals, such as the manufacture of propanediol from glucose, to the synthesis of chiral pharmaceutical intermediates, such as (2i )-indanediol, a building block of the HIV protease inhibitor Crixivan (Indinavir , Merck see Chapter 13, Section 13.3.3.30.), are presented in Chapter 20. 

Together with purified terephthalic acid, 1,3-propanediol is used to produce polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT), a polymer with remarkable "stretch-recovery" properties. The desirable attributes of PTT have been known since the 1940s, but high production costs prevented its entrance into the polymer market (29). In the 1990s, a new fossil-based route to 1,3-propanediol was developed enabling the production of PTT for higher-value applications, and PTT polymers were introduced into the market by DuPont and Shell Chemicals (29,30). 

Propanediol (1,3PD) is also undergoing a transition from a small-volume specialty chemical into a commodity. The driving force is its application in poly (trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), which is expected to partially replace polyethylene terephthalate) and polyamide because of its better performance, such as stretch recovery. The projected market volume of PTT under the trade-names CORTERRA (Shell) and Sorona 3GT (Dupont) is 1 Mt a-1 within a few years. In consequence, the production volume of 1,3PD is expected to expand from 55kta-1 in 1999 to 360 kt a-1 in the near future. 1,3PD used to be synthesized from acrolein by Degussa and from ethylene oxide by Shell (see Fig. 8.8) but a fermentative process is now joining the competition. 

A spin-off effect of the recent enormous increase in biodiesel production is that the coproduct, glycerol, has become a low-priced commodity chemical. Consequently, there is currently considerable interest in finding new applications of glycerol [204]. One possibility is to use glycerol as the feedstock for fermentative production of 1,3-propanediol (see earlier). 

Dupont has also been active in developing chemical intermediates based on natural materials. The most prominent example is glucose-derived 1,3-propanediol, a raw material for polymethylene terephthalate, a polyester with promising applications as... 

One of those value-added chemicals could be 1,3 propanediol (PDO), the key building block for DuPont orona, the company s newest polymer platform, used in applications such as plastic, textile apparel, carpeting, and packaging. 

A biocatalytic system for converting biomass to industrial chemicals is not only applicable to enzymatic conversions but also to fermentative conversion using cellulose. We report here three examples of fermentative conversion of cellulose to chemicals namely 1,3 propanediol, lactic acid, and succinic acid. 

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