by The Promising Future of Renewable Chemicals
As concerns about climate change and fossil fuel depletion rise, renewable chemicals are poised to play an increasing role in our economy and daily lives. Derived from abundant and sustainable plant-based feedstocks like corn, sugarcane and agricultural residues rather than petroleum, renewable chemicals have significant environmental advantages and economic potential.
What are Renewable Chemicals?
Renewable chemicals, also known as biobased chemicals, are chemicals produced from biomass or biological sources rather than petroleum. This biomass can come from purpose-grown crops like corn, sugarcane or switchgrass, or from forestry or agricultural waste streams. Through various conversion processes, these plant-based feedstocks are broken down into basic biochemicals and intermediates that can then be used to produce a wide range of chemicals and products identical to their petrochemical-based equivalents. Some of the most common renewable chemicals produced today include alcohols, organic acids, esters, lipids and polymer building blocks.
Benefits of Renewable Chemicals
Renewable chemicals offer several environmental and economic benefits compared to traditional petrochemicals:
– Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions: By using crops and plant biomass that sequester carbon as feedstocks rather than fossil fuels, renewable chemicals have significantly lower life cycle carbon emissions. Some can even be carbon negative over their full life cycle.
– Waste Reduction: Agricultural and forestry waste that often ends up in landfills can be converted to high-value renewable chemicals, reducing methane emissions from rotting organic waste.
– Energy Security: renewable chemicals lessen dependence on foreign oil imports, improving national energy security. Domestic production also stimulates rural economies.
– Sustainable Resource Use: Plant-based feedstocks are regenerative and can be grown domestically as crops or obtained from sustainably managed forests, providing a continuous supply.
– Price Stability: As fossil fuels face depletion and price volatility, renewable chemicals offer a long-term, stable alternative for basic materials. Production costs are also largely independent of petroleum prices.
Major Producers and Markets
The renewable chemicals industry has grown rapidly worldwide in the last decade and is projected to continue expanding significantly. Notable global leaders in renewable chemical production include companies like BASF, Cargill, DOW Chemical, DuPont, Corbion, and Avantium.
Some of the largest and most developed renewable chemical markets include:
– Bio-based Solvents: Bio-based solvents like bioethanol, biobutanol and other alcohols are increasing replacing petrochemical-based solvents in paints, coatings, inks and cleaning products due to their lower toxicity.
– Polymers: Various bioplastics, biopolymers and resin building blocks are commercially produced from plant oils, organic acids and other renewable intermediates for use in packaging, textiles, consumer goods and more.
– Surfactants: Renewable surfactants and emulsifiers for home and personal care products have grown due to consumer demand for natural alternatives to petrochemical ones.
– Lubricants: Bio-based lubricants offer comparable performance to mineral oils and help equipment manufacturers meet sustainability goals.
While still a small fraction of the overall chemical market, renewable chemicals represented around 4% of global chemical production in 2020 and are projected to grow to over 14% by 2030 according to some estimates. Continued innovation, commercial expansion and new production capacity will be important to realizing this potential.
Advancing Renewable Chemical Technologies
Though production of some renewable chemicals is already well established at commercial scale, breakthroughs in synthetic biology, biotechnology and thermochemical conversion processes are allowing increasingly complex molecules to be sustainably synthesized from biomass. Some promising areas of research and development include:
– Cellulosic Sugar Platforms: Advanced pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis methods can unlock sugars from non-food cellulosic biomass like agricultural residues at lower cost, expanding feedstock options.
– Synthetic Biology: Tailored microbes are being engineered as renewable chemical cell factories, able to convert a wide variety of sugars to targeted end products like fuels, materials and pharmaceuticals.
– Consolidated Bioprocessing: Novel microbes can simultaneously deconstruct biomass and produce specific chemicals in a single step to drive down costs.
– Gasification/Pyrolysis: Thermochemical routes like gasification and fast pyrolysis offer flexible conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to syngas or bio-oil intermediates that can then be upgraded to a large slate of chemicals and fuels.
– Catalytic Upgrading: Advances in heterogeneous catalysis continue improving conversion of renewable feedstocks and intermediates to drop-in chemicals with properties identical to petroleum-derived versions.
With further research and commercial deployment of these emerging technologies, renewable chemicals could potentially displace over 25% of transportation fuel demand and a far larger portion of materials and bulk chemical demand according to some long-term forecasts.
The Future Looks Bright
As governments increase support for bioeconomy development and mandates push industry toward more sustainable practices, renewable chemicals are poised for enormous growth. With their energy independence, greenhouse gas reduction potential, and versatility to produce whatever chemicals we need from biomass rather than finite fossil resources, renewable chemicals represent a promising future. As technologies mature and production scales up, these plant-based alternatives have the potential to transform our chemical industry and supply chains in the coming decades. Though challenges remain, the emerging renewable chemicals sector continues gaining momentum toward a bio-based future.
