Abstract
Since 2015, the sustainable development goals of the United Nations established a route map to achieve a sustainable society, pushing the industry to aim for sustainable processes. Biorefineries have been studied as the technological scheme to process integrally renewable resources. The so-called “bioactive” compounds (BACs) have been of high interest, given their high added value and potential application in pharmaceutics and health, among others. However, there are still elements to be addressed to consider them as economic drivers of sustainable processes. First, BACs can be produced from many sources and it is important to identify feedstocks for this purpose. Second, a sustainable production process should also consider valorizing the remaining components. Finally, feedstock availability plays an important role in affecting the process scale, logistics, and feasibility. This work consists of a review on the feedstocks for the sustainable production of BACs in biorefineries, covering the type of BAC, composition, and availability. Some example biorefineries are proposed using wheat straw, hemp and grapevine shoots. As a main conclusion, multiple raw materials have the potential to obtain BACs that can become economic drivers of biorefineries. This is an interesting outlook, as the integral use of the feedstocks may not only allow obtaining different types of BACs, but also other fiber products and energy for the process self-supply.
Highlights
The need to change the economy and society in general from oil-based to bio-based systems is a topic that has been in discussion for decades [1,2]
In principle, the various definitions relate to the definition of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which states that sustainable development is the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [3]
This becomes a point of coincidence between the two approaches to obtain bioactive” compounds (BACs), as plant-based feedstocks can offer the possibility of extracting BACs and the remaining fractions can be used to produce fermentable sugars that can be the substrate to produce antibiotics
Summary
The need to change the economy and society in general from oil-based to bio-based systems is a topic that has been in discussion for decades [1,2]. Reducing the dependency on fossil-based energy and materials, using raw materials more intensively, improving energy efficiency, using renewable raw materials and biomass, among many others, are some of the approaches that have been proposed for the industry in order to achieve sustainable production. Within these approaches, biorefineries have been studied as a technological scheme to process integrally renewable resources and add value to biomass [4]. For the production process to be sustainable, the extraction/production of the bioactive compound itself should not be considered alone and the valorization of the remaining components of the raw material. The further valorization of the feedstocks allows broadening the range of products (including other BACs as antibiotics), and, the remaining solids can be still used for the production of energy
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