RESEARCH ARTICLE
“Green” Chemicals from Renewable Agricultural Biomass - A Mini Review
Yixiang Xu, Milford A. Hanna*, Loren Isom
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 54
Last Page: 61
Publisher ID: TOASJ-2-54
DOI: 10.2174/1874331500802010054
Article History:
Received Date: 06/06/2008Revision Received Date: 30/06/2008
Acceptance Date: 18/08/2008
Electronic publication date: 5/9/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Recently, utilization of renewable resources to replace petroleum as a primary feedstock for liquid fuels, chemicals and materials has become a topic of interest around the world. It is intriguing due to rising oil prices, the negative effects of petroleum on the environment and the advantages of renewable resources, such as their abundance and sustainability. Herein, the possibilities for biobased chemicals prepared from renewable resources are reviewed. The most popular feedstocks for commodity and specialty chemicals are carbohydrates as they account for approximately 95% of the biomass produced annually. The conversion routes, including chemical and biological routes, direct extraction, and selected technical advancements are discussed. Examples of select biochemcials, their conversion pathways from biomass, and their derivatives and potential applications are indentified.