Platform chemical glycerol

When the structure of biomass components has to be quite drastically rearranged compared to the building blocks needed, synthesis gas or different sugars can serve as platform chemicals. The latter can be converted, for example, to sugar-derived building blocks (Figure 2.2.3) - that is, to glycerol, sorbitol, levulinic acid, and furfural. 

Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is a valuable platform chemical that can be produced from glucose or glycerol by biological processes. This chapter provides an overview and the current status of microbial 3-HP production. It also describes various constraints of microbial 3-HP production and possible solutions. Finally, economic outlook and future prospects of biological 3-HP production are discussed. 

There are twelve important platform chemicals listed that are derived from biomass [26]. They include succinic acid, itaconic add, and glycerol. Some other important biobased renewable chemicals such as lactic acid and 1,4-butanediol are produced via fermentation and/or chemo-enzymatic processes from various biomass sources like com, sugarcane, wheat, etc. These platform chemicals have been used as starting materials for the production of polymers. 

As a platform chemical The main uses are as source for ethylene glycol (EG), propylene glycol (PG), and glycerol production (Fig. 12.2). These compoxmds can be obtained by sorbitol hydrogenolysis with Ni-MgO catalysts with varying Ni/Mg ratios to test the selectivity of the conversion (Chen et al., 2013). 

FIGURE 26.1 A typical example of a platform chemical-based biorefinery from crude glycerol. 

The application of platform chemicals is replacing chemical materials and finding new industrial applications. Glycerol finds its present application in the cosmetics, soaps, food, pharmaceuticals, lubricants, leather, and paper industries. For potential markets, glycerol is even fermented to produce 1,3-PD (Nair et al., 2005 Yu et al., 2012 Pachapur et al., 2015a). 

This chapter is an overview of architectures adopted for the catalytic/biocatalytic composites used in wide applications like the biomass valorization or fine chemical industry. On this perspective, the chapter updates the reader with the most fresh examples of construction designs and concepts considered for the synthesis of such composites. Their catalytic properties result from the introduction of catalytic functionalities and vary from inorganic metal species e.g., Ru, Ir, Pd, or Rh) to well-organized biochemical structures like enzymes e.g., lipase, peroxidase, (3-galactosidase) or whole cells. Catalytic/biocatalytic procedures for the biomass conversion into platform molecules e.g., glucose, GVL, Me-THF, sorbitol, succinic acid, and glycerol) and their further transformation into value-added products are detailed in order to make understandable the utility of these complex architectures and to associate the composite properties to their performances, versatility, and robustness. 

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