Application and prospect of bioconversion in chemical industry

At present, researchers in the chemical industry are exploring the use of renewable feedstock to improve sustainability, and this prompts the exploration of bioprocesses for the production of chemicals to a great extent. Biological systems have many attractive features that include versatility, substrate selectivity, regioselectivity, chemoselectivity, enantioselectivity and catalysis at ambient temperatures and pressures. However, bioprocesses are facing a challenge of cost competitiveness with chemical processes because capital assets associated with the existing commercial processes are high. The chemical industry will probably use biotechnology with existing feedstock and processes to extract higher values from existing feedstock, and to treat the by products or waste streams of the process. Bioprocesses offer either a process or a product advantage over traditional chemical routes. Bioprocesses will become more widely used in this decade. [