Selected Applications of Bioprocesses for Chemicals

Although biotechnology offers real commercial opportunities for improving the production of commodity, specialty, and fine chemicals and for producing new products, the near-term timing and extent of these opportunities are difficult to predict. This paper summarizes the techniques and process economics of three new bioprocessing routes for chemicals: acrylamide production by enzymatic transformation of acrylonitrile to replace an existing chemical catalysis process, ascorbic acid production using a recombinant microorganism to replace several steps in the current process, and phenylalanine production by fermentation or by two alternative enzymatic conversion routes. These processes illustrate the complexity, time, and cost of evaluating new applications for biotechnology in chemicals production. Finding these applications will require multidisciplinary teams, advanced facilities, and considerable prior knowledge about the bioconversion steps to be used.