22 Introduction to Renewable Biomaterials
rubber production of 25 million tons is provided by natural rubber (van Beilen and
Poirier, 2008).
Cellulose is used to produce fibers like rayon for the textile industry with a volume of
3.5 million tons (Morris, Welters, and Garthoff, 2011). It is also the basis for paper and
cardboard production. More than 500 million m^3 of wood is used to make 160 million
tons of pulp. As a side product, 50 million tons of lignin appears, only 2% of that material
is used for further chemical products (Morris, Welters, and Garthoff, 2011).
Starch is used to stiffen textiles and increase the mechanical strength of yarns. It goes
as filler in very different applications like inks, detergents, and drug tablets. Around
30–40% of the global production of 2.5 billion tons goes into such non-food applications
(Morris, Welters, and Garthoff, 2011).
Soap, perfumes, cosmetics as well as paints, wood treatment products, and hydraulic
fluids and lubricants are made from or contain vegetable oils.
1.3.9.3 Biocatalysts
In bioprocessing, bio-based feedstock is not only the basic material to be transformed
into a product. It is as well the raw material to provide the transforming catalyst itself.
This catalyst can be a whole cell like yeast in ethanol fermentation where yeast cells
transform sugar into ethanol. The complex cellular metabolism consisting of enzymatic
reaction chains nested in one another is steered by cellular control in a well-balanced
way but can be modified to perform defined biochemical transformations and push
metabolic pathways to cellular products of industrial relevance. This is the business field
of specialized small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Purified microbial enzymes are another group of protein biocatalysts, increasing
reaction rates by 100 million to 10 billion times faster than normal reactions (Gurung
et al.,2013).
Enzymes play a significant role in food and feed processing, medicine, and technical
applications (Association of Manufacturers and Formulators of Enzyme Products, kein
Datum). Seventy-five percent of technical enzymes catalyze hydrolytic reactions. In
food processing, one of the commercially most important enzymes is훼-amylase, the
enzyme splitting starch into glucose for the beverage industry. In medicine, another
commercially relevant application is presented by DNA polymerase. This is the key
enzyme in DNA sequencing for genomic research, diagnostics, and forensics. A grow-
ing technical application of enzymes is in digesting lignocellulosic biomass as a first
process step to use such bio-feedstock industrially. Enzymes are not only processing
catalysts but also active ingredients in consumer products. For example, detergents
contain proteinases and lipases that remove food stains.
Enzyme production is globally about 100,000 tons making a $3.4 billion business
with leading companies like Novozymes (Denmark), Danisco and DuPont (USA),
DSM (Netherlands), and BASF (Germany) (Lorenz, 2012). It is no coincidence that big
chemical industries complement their synthesis tool set by biological catalysts. Even
the very first industrial application of an enzyme in tanning by Otto Röhm in 1908 in
Darmstadt (Germany) resulted in a chemical company, which today is part of Evonik
Industries (Germany). This example not only shows the close relationship of bio-based
and chemical industries but also demonstrates how in the early twentieth century the
chemical innovation cycle started its next round into biotechnology. Enzyme science
earned its first Nobel Prize in 1947 (James B. Sumner, Cornell University, USA).
