Biochemical and Chemical Catalytic Routes for the Production of Biochemicals from Biomass: Current Status and Future Perspectives

The rapid industrialization, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, exhausting fossil fuel resources, and increase in the prices of fuels have led to an increase in the demand for alternative sources of energy and chemicals. The best approach to compete with fossil-based petroleum refineries is the incorporation of bio-based feedstocks in integrated biorefineries. Bio-based feedstocks are renewable resources that could be used as sustainable alternatives to petrochemical sources and could produce a wide variety of biofuels and industrially relevant biochemicals. The conversion processes required for future biorefineries would be different from the ones being used in the petrochemical industry. This chapter describes state-of-the-art biochemical and chemical catalytic routes for producing industrially relevant biochemicals from biomass followed by their upgradation into high value biochemicals while minimizing the loss of carbon and the generation of by-products. Further, the current status and future perspectives for the production of bio-based chemicals have been discussed.