Perspectives on Chemicals from Renewable Resources - Sustainable Biotechnology: Sources of Renewable Energy - page 195

Perspectives on Chemicals from Renewable
Resources

Elinor L. Scott, Johan P.M. Sanders, and Alexander Steinbüchel

Abstract Faced with increasing global demand for raw materials to meet the needs
of transportation fuels, energy and chemical production coupled with depleting
fossil reserves, fluctuating oil prices and ecological impact associated with CO 2
emissions, there has been heightened awareness for the need to utilise alternative
and sustainable resources and production methods.
There have been many reports on the use of biomass for the production of chemi-
cal products. These have generally focused on the use of fatty acids, lignin and most
significantly on the use of carbohydrates as raw materials. In the later case there
have been a number of reports on the transformation of sugars by chemicals means
but the majority of transformations involve fermentation and other biotechnologi-
cal processes resulting in the formation of new and traditional chemicals used in
industry. Less well explored is the use of proteins and amino acids in industry.
Here it is reported that protein and amino acid rest streams generated from pro-
cesses such as the production of industrial starch, can be used as a potential raw
material for the production of industrial products. With the aid of biotechnology,
these complex rest streams may be refined to products with a more defined com-
position aiding the isolation of desired amino acids which can be used to produce
an array of industrially significant products. More specifically it is described that
Protamylasse R

, generated from starch production, can be used as a media for the
production of cyanophycin polymer which can be utilised as a source of arginine
and aspartic acid for the production of compounds such as 1,4-butanediamine and
succinic acid.

Keywords Amino acids · Decarboxylation · Cyanophycin · Rest streams