Biorenewable Chemicals: Multi-Product Production Pathways
ID: 3705

Abstract: The production of industrial chemicals is an enormous enterprise that impacts all aspects of society from personal care products to building materials. The long-term future of the industry is predicated on transitioning from current nonrenewable, petroleum feedstocks to renewable biobased feedstocks. The high efficiency of the petrochemical industry is built on its technical maturity, and basis in three primary molecules (ethylene, propylene, and benzene). In contrast, several biorenewable chemicals have been commercialized within the past few years, but they required a new production pathway for a single product. To successfully replace petrochemicals with biorenewable chemicals will require the creation of production pathways that can lead to multiple products.

This panel will present biorenewable chemical production pathways that have the potential to lead to a range of chemical products. The conversion technologies in these pathways will likely utilize both chemical catalysis and biocatalysis, so possible synergies between the catalyst technology areas will also be discussed. Elevance will discuss the use of chemical catalysts to produce platform chemicals. Whereas, LS9 will discuss exploitation of the fatty acid synthesis pathway for producing multiple products. Finally, the possibility of combining biocatalysis and chemical catalysis to create a generalized framework for producing an array of chemicals will be discussed in a presentation from the NSF Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals.



Mike Rushton

Today’s chemicals industry, in an effort to reduce their fossil carbon footprints and dependence on price volatile crude oil and natural gas, are searching for renewable feedstocks and ingredients for their complex formulations. It is widely recognized that complex biomass materials, whether derived from wood, agricultural crops or purpose grown plants, have enormous potential to be sources of bio-renewable chemicals – but how to unlock that potential in an economic way that results in reasonable yields of useful biochemicals?

Lignol’s Biorefining process is one route to gain access to a wide range of bio-renewable chemicals in a single integrated process. Using an advanced pretreatment process, lignocellulosic materials can be fractionated into their basic building block chemicals from which a range of derivatives can be co-produced, among them sugar platform chemicals, high purity lignin derivatives and pure cellulose.

This presentation will describe Lignol’s Biorefining process technology and its potential to be a source of bio-renewable chemicals. Several specific chemical applications for Lignol’s HP-LTM lignin product will be discussed, along with potential sugar-based products and cellulose derivatives.







Moderator: Jill Euken, Iowa State University, Office of Biotechnology (United States)

Presenter 1: Producing Platform Biorenewable Chemicals with Chemical Catalysts
Michael Tupy, Elevance Renewable Sciences, Inc, (United States)  [Confirmed]

Presenter 2: Exploiting Fatty Acid Synthesis to Produce Platform Biorenewable Chemicals 
Stephen Del Cardayre, LS9, (United States)  [Confirmed]

Presenter 3: Combining Biocatalysis and Chemical Catalysis to Create An Array of Biorenewable Chemicals  
Brent Shanks, Iowa State University, Office of Biotechnology, (United States)  [Confirmed]

Presenter 4 (if necessary): Lignol's Biorefining Process - Pathway to Multiple Renewable Biochemical Products  
E. Kendall Pye, Lignol Energy Corporation, (Canada)  [Confirmed]

Panel Organizer:
Jill Euken, Iowa State University, Office of Biotechnology, (United States)

Why should your submission should be selected for this year’s program?
The speakers on this panel will discuss new catalyst systems to create a set of base molecules which can be used to produce an array of biorenewable chemicals (as opposed to the current, very expensive one-off production processes for biorenewable chemicals). These new systems will allow biorenewable chemicals to successfully compete with petroleum-based chemicals and transform the industrial chemical industry from petroleum-based feedstocks to biobased renewable feedstocks.