1

Potential and Challenges of Bio-basedChemicals

John M Woodley

Process Engineering and Technology Group

Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

Technical University of Denmark

Lyngby

Denmark

Outline

• Rationale for chemicals from biomass

• Opportunities for the future

• Challenges

• Concluding remarks

2

The potential is significant ….

Total Value of Chemical products sold in 2003: USD 1.24 trillion- Excluding pharmaceutical and consumer products

Japan Asia USA Western Europe RoW

Japan

Asia

RoW

USA

Western Europe

Commodity Chemical Market Size

(2005): ca. 360 Billion USD

• Virtually all bulk chemicals are

produced from oil and gas today

• Technological advances and

sustained high oil prices suggest

that it is possible to substitute

many bulk chemicals at a lower and

less volatile cost using renewables

and/or a biological route

1. Rationale for chemicals from biomass

Sustainable manufacture

• Aim to reduce the amount of waste – Reduce the number of steps

• Reduce the energy demands

• Avoid toxic materials

• Use renewable resources (starting material/feedstock and catalyst)

3

Potential targets

Sustainable and renewable feedstocks

Fuels

Fine chemicals and intermediates

Bulk chemicals

Biomass should not just be used as the feedstock for biofuels(amount required, economics)

2. Opportunities

• New products

• New processes

• New technology

• Can therefore lead to new possibilities in the market and new IP

4

Development of biorefineries

Feedstock New feedstock New feedstock

(Oil) (Renewable) (Renewable)

Intermediate New intermediate New intermediate

Product Product New product

Targets have been identified (NREL)

OO

HO

3-Hydroxybutyrolactone

O

HO

O

OH

O

2,5-Furan dicarboxylic acid

Succinic acid

HO

O

OH

O

HO

OH

O

O

OH

OH

OH

OH

Glutaric acid

HO OH

O

3-Hydroxypropionic acid

HO

OH

O

O

Itaconic acid

OH

OHOH

Glycerol

5

CH2OH

CH2OH

O

HOH

OHH

H OH

OOOH

CH2OH

HOH

OHH

H OH

H OH

OH

OO

OH

O

OH

GI H+Ox

Glucose Fructose

HMF

5-hydroxymethyl furfural

FDA

furan-2,5-dicarboxylic acid

DTU-Novozymes A/S Project

O

OH O

OH

Terephthalic acid

Bottles made of Polyethylene tere-phthalate

(PET)

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

HMF as platform chemical

6

Application of biotechnology

Bio-acrylic acid (Novozymes and Cargill)

Starch,

Biomass GlucoseBio-Acrylic

Acid3-Hydroxy-

propionic acid

Enzymatic Process

Fermentation

metabolic engineering

Chemical downstream

process

Current petrochemical route for production of acrylic acid:

New process based on biomass for production of acrylic acid

Propylene Acrylic Acid

Propylene 2000: 430 USD/metric tonPropylene 2008: 1450 USD/metric ton

7

Some other relevant projects

• DuPont/BP: Butanol

• Danisco/Goodyear: Isoprene

• Amyris Biotechnologies: Isoprene, alternative

fuel

• LS-9: alternative fuels

• Metabolics Explorer: L-Methionine, 1,2-

Propanediol, 1,3-Propanediol, N-Butanol,

Glycolic acid

Advantageous features of enzymes

• Exquisite selectivity (stereo- and regio- )

• Require water for operation (green catalysts)

• Operate under mild conditions (pH, temperature, pressure) – reduced byproducts, green processes and reduced protection and deprotection (fewer steps)

• Catalyst from renewable resource (green catalysts)

• Ability to alter catalyst properties (via protein engineering and genetic engineering (cloning and expression))

Pollard and Woodley (2007) Trends Biotechnol 25, 66; Woodley (2008) Trends Biotechnol 26, 321

8

• Biocatalysis is a mature technology in the fine chemicals industry today

• Around 150 processes operating in the pharmaceutical industry alone

• Typical enzymes used in production of fine chemicals: decarboxylases, lipases, amidases, acylases, oxygenases, oxidoreductases, lyases, esterases…

Fine and specialty chemicals

Biocatalysis / chemistry

Desirable

CHEM

BIO

Productivity

Selectivity

9

Opportunities for enzyme catalysis

• Multi-functional molecules which are sensitive

• Materials based on the new building blocks such as glucose and glycerol

• Molecules coming from fermentation

Enzyme catalysis following fermentation

• Aqueous chemistry – fermentation is aqueous

• Operation under dilute conditions – fermentation is dilute

• Matched rates – biological reactions are selective, not fast

• Selective – fermentation produces many products

10

Biocatalysis – Fermentation –Heterogeneous catalysis – A new synergy– a new catalysis

Enzymatic conversion

FermentationHetrogeneousCatalysis

3. Challenges

11

Current basic chemical building blocks

CH4

methane

H2C CH2

ethene

CH3

toluene

CH3

xylene

benzene

1,3-butadiene

propylene

The Fossil Chemical Industry

H3C

Potential targets

Sustainable and green feedstock

Fuels

Fine chemicals and intermediates

Bulk chemicals

Biomass should not just be used as the feedstock for biofuels(amount required, economics)

12

Challenges

• New infrastructure

• New technology

– The cost of the raw material is less than 70% of the costmanufacturing

– Improvements in technology are therefore required

• New methods of evaluation are required

– Need to include retrofit, new technology and sustainabilityassessments

Bio-based chemistry is in its infancy but has to compete on price and performance

Level of optimisation

Time

Petroleum based chemistry

challenge

Renewables/Bio-based chemistry

challenge

13

Productivity targets for biocatalysis

gproduct/L

kg

pro

du

ct/k

gim

mo

b.e

nzym

e

100

10

1

0 100 200 300 400

Fine chemicals

Bulk chemicals

1000

10000

Pharma

14

Potential

process

improvement

Evaluation

(Experimental)

Data collection

& modelling

Benefit of

implementation

Cost of

implementation

4. Concluding remarks

15

Vision

• Build a support structure similar to that for existing chemical processesfor bio-based chemicals and products

• Use existing tools and develop new ones to solve special problems withbio-based processes

– Use of water

– Product recovery

– Process integration

– Reactor selection and design (or retrofit)

Conclusions

• There are significant opportunities in bio-based chemicals for new products, new processes, new technology, and therefore new IP

• Focus for biomass conversion needs to be on chemicals as well as biofuels

• An integrated demonstration project would enable a fuller understandingof the opportunties and challenges

• The development of a suitable infrastructure will be required, but thereare many opportunities existing currently

• Integration of fermentation, biocatalysis and heterogeneous catalysis willbe required and research is currently underway