| FEATURES & INNOVATIONS |


From trash to treasure: FROM AGRICULTURAL WASTE


INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS


A*STAR’s Biomass-To-Chemical and Bio-Renewable Chemicals from


Biomass programs are leading the way on the use of waste biomass for the sustainable production of industrial chemicals


E


ach year more than half a billion tonnes of oil — more than an eighth of the total global oil consumption — are used to produce chemicals and plastics. The demand for oil leaves the


petrochemical industry, with a market value slated to exceed US$758 billion by 2022, critically exposed to oil price fluctuations and the uncertainty of dependence on a finite fossil resource. Researchers and chemical engineers around the world have been trying to find ways to use alternative raw materials such as agricultural waste, or ‘biomass’, to replace petroleum in the production of common industrial


12 A*STAR RESEARCH


chemicals as a step toward a more sustainable chemical industry. In 2012, A*STAR brought together scien-


tists working on research related to biomass feedstocks to form the Biomass-To-Chemical (B2C) programme. Led by the A*STAR Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES), in close collaboration with the Institute of Bioengineering and Nano- technology (IBN), the B2C programme has worked toward developing a complete value chain, from raw biomass to commodity and specialty chemicals, as a commercially viable demonstration of biomass-based sustainable chemical production.


A local resource Almost half of the world’s petrochemical production occurs in Asia, which happens to have a rich source of waste biomass — the waste ‘fruit’ left over from palm oil production. Research at the ICES has focused on utilizing this cheap and local ‘empty fruit bunch’ (EFB) resource for sustainable chemical production. “The biggest challenge we face is in cost-ef-


fectively converting EFB into the pure ‘feed- stocks’ or basic chemicals needed for industrial chemical production,” explains Wu Jinchuan, head of industrial biotechnology at the ICES. “For this we need to develop cheaper ways to obtain fermentable sugars from the biomass, and


ISSUE 6 | JANUARY – MARCH 2017


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