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Renewable Resources: From Refinery to Bio-refinery

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Paradigms in Green Chemistry and Technology

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science ((GREENCHEMIST))

Abstract

Chemists are educated to consider petrochemicals as the source of both new molecules and energy. However, biological material (biomass) from living or recently living organisms, not metabolized for thousands of years into petrol and coal, offers an alternative feedstock that is elaborated in the so called bio-refineries to a variety of platform chemicals (alcohols, acids, esters, carbonyls, hydrocarbons). The environmental performance of fermentative and biocatalytic methods is compared with that from fossil fuel.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The prefix bio for biocatalytic products from renewable resources seems to be strongly established in the literature, although this has obviously no chemical meaning.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PhotoGreen Lab, Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia, V.Le Taramelli 12, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Angelo Albini & Stefano Protti

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  1. Angelo Albini
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  2. Stefano Protti
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Correspondence to Angelo Albini .

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Albini, A., Protti, S. (2016). Renewable Resources: From Refinery to Bio-refinery. In: Paradigms in Green Chemistry and Technology. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25895-9_4

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