Ahmad, Mark, Bugg, Timothy D. H., Clark, Andrew J., Coles, Stuart R., Collis, Alana, Kirwan, Kerry, Koncsag, Claudia I., Barker, Guy C., Burton, Kerry S., Eastwood, Daniel C. and Pink, David (2010) Wealth out of waste. In: 3rd International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Aug 15-18, 2010

Abstract

Emerging legislation and increasing social and political demand for more ethical and sustainable manufacturing routes has led researchers to investigate alterations to methods used to produce everyday items. Addressing this problem requires a multi-disciplinary approach to enable a variety of novel technologies. Conventional biorefineries use traditional fermentation to convert biomass to feedstocks such as bioethanol, however there is an untapped resource for sustainable materials being wasted. Straw is made up of three main constituents: cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin. Whilst the first two can be readily converted to bioethanol, lignin remains under-exploited. The chemicals structure of lignin has been shown to yield many interesting breakdown products potentially useful on an industrial scale. The use of straw is advantageous due to the surplus currently produced in the U.K. The overriding objective of this program is to develop novel materials from plant waste by utilizing natural mechanisms in a truly innovative solid-state biorefinery. Bacterial and fungal species have been shown to target ligno-cellulosic breakdown followed by extractions to produce metabolic profiles of available chemicals. The chemicals are then able to be converted to or utilized as useful materials such as nutraceuticals, polymers and other high value products. This program is developing underpinning science and technology that can be applied at a local level, but on a global scale, allowing the utilization of local resource to produce sustainable high value products.

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