Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4
Platform Molecules
Thomas J. Farmer
1
and Mark Mascal
2
1
Department of Chemistry, Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York, UK
2
Department of Chemistry, University of California Davis, USA
4.1 Introduction
This topic highlights the potential for biomass to be used as feedstock for our
chemical industry, supporting and eventually supplanting the plethora of chemicals
and materials we use in everyday life that are currently derived from non-
renewable fossil resources. Other chapters within this topic demonstrate the
potential for biomass to be grown, harvested, processed and utilised as an effective
replacement for fossil resources for the production of polymers, materials, fuel
and energy. However, to ultimately supplant fossil resources the bio-economy
needs a means by which to produce the array of chemical products familiar and
important to us, such as plastics, synthetic textiles, dyes and pigments, surfactants,
pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals and home and personal care products. The modern
petrochemical industry produces the vast majority of these products and materials
from a small set of simple, cheap base chemicals. Research over the last 20 years
has endeavoured to demonstrate that the bio-economy can deliver the same, via a
set of simple, cheap biomass-derived building block chemicals, also referred to as
platform molecules.
