JOURNAL ARTICLE
RESEARCH SUPPORT, U.S. GOV'T, NON-P.H.S.
REVIEW
Add like
Add dislike
Add to saved papers

Integration of heterogeneous and biochemical catalysis for production of fuels and chemicals from biomass.

The past decade has seen significant government and private investment in fundamental research and process development for the production of biofuels and chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass-derived sugars. This investment has helped create new metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches, novel homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, and chemical and biological routes that convert sugars, lignin, and waste products such as glycerol into hydrocarbon fuels and valuable chemicals. With the exception of ethanol, economical biofuels processes have yet to be realized. A potentially viable way forward is the integration of biological and chemical catalysis into processes that exploit the inherent advantages of each technology while circumventing their disadvantages. Microbial fermentation excels at converting sugars from low-cost raw materials streams into simple alcohols, acids, and other reactive intermediates that can be condensed into highly reduced, long and branched chain hydrocarbons and other industrially useful compounds. Chemical catalysis most often requires clean feed streams to avoid catalyst deactivation, but the chemical and petroleum industries have developed large scale processes for C-C coupling, hydrogenation, and deoxygenation that are driven by low grade heat and low-cost feeds such as hydrogen derived from natural gas. In this context, we suggest that there is a reasonably clear route to the high yield synthesis of biofuels from biomass- or otherwise derived-fermentable sugars: the microbial production of reactive intermediates that can be extracted or separated into clean feed stream for upgrading by chemical catalysis. When coupled with new metabolic engineering strategies that maximize carbon and energy yields during fermentation, biomass-to-fuels processes may yet be realized.

Full text links

We have located links that may give you full text access.
Can't access the paper?
Try logging in through your university/institutional subscription. For a smoother one-click institutional access experience, please use our mobile app.

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app

Mobile app image

Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app

All material on this website is protected by copyright, Copyright © 1994-2024 by WebMD LLC.
This website also contains material copyrighted by 3rd parties.

By using this service, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

Your Privacy Choices Toggle icon

You can now claim free CME credits for this literature searchClaim now

Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app