6 Introduction to Renewable Biomaterials
based on the cultivation ofPenicillium chrysogenum. Companies with very different
backgrounds in chemistry, synthetic drugs, and food production got involved in
developing early fermentation methods. It should be emphasized that those companies
focused on fermentation because there was no technical alternative. Penicillin antibi-
otics were not available by chemical synthesis. The production of penicillin is therefore
seen as the starting point of industrial biotechnology (in contrast to traditional food
biotechnology using microbial processes such as yogurt, beer, and wine fermentation).
Drugs added a quite different quality to the chemical industry’s product portfolio.
This chemical product sector is characterized by extremely high functionality to fight
diseases, thus adding real value and commercial profit. In addition, this sector is
extremely knowledge based – documented by Nobel Prize–winning research.
Polymers A combination of extensive science and the availability of carbon sources
triggered in the 1930s another chemical success story: polymers. Increasing capacities
in oil refineries not only provided gasoline and diesel but with naphtha (Table 1.4) also
the fraction of long-chain hydrocarbons to be cracked down to methane, ethylene,
and propylene. Platform intermediates like these are till today the biggest chemicals
by production volume. Their carbon content is the share of carbon of the molecule’s
molecular mass (g mol−^1 ). Ethylene, for example, consists of two carbon (atomic mass
12 u) and four hydrogen atoms (atomic mass 1 u), which gives a molecular mass of
28 g mol−^1 and a share of carbon of 85.7% (Table 1.5).
Not only the availability of a cheap and easy-to-handle feedstock pushed chemical
industries but also the often highly advantageous stoichiometric product yield. For
Table 1.4Oil-refinery output from low to high distillation temperature.
25 ∘C >>>>> 350 ∘C
Refinery gas Gasoline Naphtha Kerosene Diesel oil Fuel oil Residue
Bottled gas Automotive
fuel
Chemical
feedstock
Aircraft
fuel
Truck fuel,
bus fuel
Ship fuel,
power
generation
Bitumen for
road
construction
Table 1.5Global production volume of bulk chemicals (2010) (Davis,
2011) and content of carbon.
Chemical
category Chemical C (%)
Production
(million tons)
Ccontent
(million tons)
Olefins Ethylene C 2 H 4 85.7 123 105
Propylene C 3 H 6 85.7 75 64
Butadiene C 4 H 6 88.9 10 9
Hexane C 6 H 14 83.7 5 4
Aromatics Xylenes C 8 H 10 90.6 43 39
Benzene C 6 H 6 92.3 40 37
Toluene C 7 H 6 91.3 20 18
