TABLE OF CONTENTS Plants are very effective chemical mini-factories or refineries insofar as they produce chemicals by specific pathways. The chemicals they produce are usually essential manufacture (called metabolites) include sugars and amino acids that are essential for the growth of the plant, as well as more complex compounds.
Biorefining offers a key method to accessing the integrated production of chemicals, materials, and fuels. The biorefinery concept is analogous to that of an oil refinery (Chap. 3).
In a manner similar to the petroleum refinery, a biorefinery would integrate a variety of conversion processes to produce multiple product streams such as motor fuels and other chemicals from biomass. In short, a biorefinery would combine the essential technologies to transform biological raw materials into a range of industrially useful intermediates. However, the type of biorefinery would have to be differentiated by the character of the feedstock. For example, the crop biorefinery would use raw materials such as cereals or maize and the lignocellulose biorefinery would use raw material with high cellulose content, such as straw, wood, and paper waste.
In addition, a variety of methods techniques can be employed to obtain different product portfolios of bulk chemicals, fuels, and materials. Biotechnology-based conversion processes can be used to ferment the biomass carbohydrate content into sugars that can then be further processed. As one example, the fermentation path to lactic acid shows promise as a route to biodegradable plastics. An alternative is to employ thermochemical conversion processes which use pyrolysis or...
