Combination of chemical and biological transformation for the sustainable manufacturing of bulk chemicals

Abstract

Bulk chemicals, also called commodity chemicals, occupy an important position within the national economy. At present, the preparation of bulk chemicals in China is mainly based on chemical transformation using petroleum, coal, natural gas and other non-renewable fossil resources as the raw materials. The development of chemical processes is unsustainable and the existence of serious pollution accompanied by a considerable number of carbon dioxide emissions has caused environmental problems. The future trends of Chinas bulk chemicals manufacturing will be diversified feedstocks and green synthesis processes. The use of renewable biomass as raw materials and biotransformation will become research hotspots in bulk chemicals preparation. Chemical transformation and biotransformation have their respective advantages but cannot avoid their shortcomings. The effective integration of chemical transformation and biotransformation can fully exert each advantage, thus resulting in a high-performance green process. This review discusses the key scientific problems of combined chemical and biological transformation to prepare bulk chemicals, including feedstocks fusion, process fusion and integrated system fusion. Measures and suggestions on the development of related fields are also put forward.