| FEATURES & INNOVATIONS |


Waste biomass from palm oil production, known as empty fruit bunch, represents an enormous untapped resource for industrial chemical production.


more powerful microbes for fermentation of the sugars to obtain useful feedstocks such as lactic acid in industrial yields.” Lactic acid is a food preservative and curing


and flavoring agent, but it is also used as a crude feedstock for the production of many other industrial chemicals. As a vital first link in the biomass-to-chemical value chain, a process has been developed by Wu’s team for efficiently converting EFB to high-yield lactic acid by enzyme-driven hydrolysis followed by fermentation using thermophilic bacteria that occur naturally in Singapore. “With this process we have shown


that we can produce high-yield lactic acid www.astar-research.com


from EFB,” says Wu. “Our next step is to lower the processing cost further by refining the pretreatment and fermentation technologies.”


From crude feedstock to industrial chemicals Many industrial chemicals still rely on petroleum-based feedstocks. Finding a way to substitute a renewable feedstock like biomass-derived lactic acid in the production of a wide range of chemicals will be critical to driving a sustainable revolution in global chemical production. The ICES Heterogeneous Catalysis


division, under the leadership of Armando


Borgna, is working on the conversion of lactic acid to common industrial chemicals like acrylic acid, which is normally produced from petroleum-based propylene. “Acrylic acid is an important commodity


chemical used for superabsorbent polymers, plastics, and synthetic rubber, as well as in the manufacture of coatings, paint formulations and leather finishing,” says Choi Won Jae, head of the Bioprocess Engineering Centre and the B2C programme director. “There are intensive efforts going on worldwide to develop a biological-based method to produce it from a renewable feedstock. Our approach using lactic acid allows us to make use of


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