Sustainable Production of Bio-based Succinic Acid

The undeniable request for new synthetic routes for bulk chemicals production, which today,\nare mostly oil-derived, has arrived together with the urgent need for finding renewable\nfeedstocks. Industrial biotechnology is often regarded as a potentially environmentally\nfriendly alternative technology to replace traditional chemical synthesis of several\ncommodity chemicals from petrochemical based oil refineries, contributing to a more\nsustainable chemical industry.\nDuring the last decades of the 20th century, biotechnology and biochemical engineering\nhave brought to light sugars as alternative raw-materials to produce a wide range of\nbiobased chemicals aiming for a place of their own in the world chemical market. It is\ntherefore natural that the United States Department of Energy (US DOE) has identified\nseveral biobased chemicals as market opportunities for reducing fossil fuel dependency in\nthe chemical industry. These 15 compounds have in common their versatility, as they are\noften building blocks for other added value chemicals.\nSuccinic acid, a dicarboxylic acid, has been used as a precursor for many industrially\nimportant chemicals as shown in Figure 1. Over the last decade, much progress has been\nmade on the development of a bio-based process for succinic acid production that can\nultimately become competitive with the conventional chemical process. And therefore it was\nidentified as one of the top candidates as an alternative to oil-derived bulk chemicals.\nThe scope of this work is to show how succinic acid can be produced in a cost-effective way\nfrom glucose by fed-batch fermentation using recombinant Corynebacterium glutamicum\nΔldhA-pCRA717 (Okino, et al. 2008). This project presents and discusses the impact of a\nwheat flour by-products based route to produce succinic acid. An upstream/downstream\nprocess has been designed and optimized for a 10% world market share (18000 ton/year)\nand the land footprint was determined.\nREFERENCES\nOkino, S., Noburyu, R., Suda, M., Jojima, T., Masayuki, I., & Yukawa, H. (2008). An efficient\nsuccinic acid production process in a metabolically engineered Corynebacterium\nglutamicum strain . Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (81), 459-464.\nUnited States Department of Energy. (2004). Top Value Added Chemicals from Biomass.\n(T. W. Petersen, Ed.) United States of America.