A Biobased Economy - Sustainability for the Food Sciences - page 350

provide fuel, fiber, and an array of chemical compounds. Even today, many materials are
produced from plant tissues.
Plant based feedstocks will be processed in biorefineries, which are equivalent to tradi-
tional oil refineries but use biomass instead. The idea is that the biorefinery will produce fuels,
heat, power, and precursors that then could be transformed into useful chemicals. Feedstocks
for the biorefinery will be agricultural crops and residues, trees, grasses, animal wastes, and
municipal solid wastes. Conversion processes include acid/enzymatic hydrolysis, fermenta-
tion, bioconversion, chemical conversion, gasification/pyrolysis, and co-firing.
Production of fuels and chemicals from plants seems at first a better alternative to petro-
leum; however, there are some problems with the massive production of biomass, such as low
energy return on the investment, massive need of land, deforestation, need of fertilizers and
water, reduction of biodiversity, competition with food, lack of a mature technology, and high
energy demand for separations.
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