Evaluation of wheat as generic feedstock for chemical production

Biotechnology may have grown remarkably in the past 10 years but one of the reasons that restrains its dominance over chemical processing is the type of raw materials that are used. Price is the major barrier to development. European prices of fermentation feedstocks are not competitive in comparison with world market prices and fossil fuel sources of carbon. In addition, the need for cheap and efficient raw materials for bioprocessing is increasing rapidly and the carbohydrate extraction industry (starch and sugar) is unable to meet such requirements because it is largely based on old technology with high-energy requirements. Furthermore, the major consumer of the carbohydrate extraction industry is the food sector, which diminishes the outlets for bioprocessing. A solution to this problem can be achieved by developing a generic feedstock from agricultural products/by-products, which will provide high efficiency in conjunction with profitability. The production of such a generic feedstock from renewable raw materials, such as dedicated feedstock crops (silviculture or short-rotation tree crops), conventional food crops (cereals) and waste by-products derived from industry, has stimulated extensive international interest among scientific communities. In this study, wheat has been evaluated, including preliminary critical review and economic analysis, as a generic feedstock for chemical production. Initially, the world wheat production was evaluated for the production of major bioproducts, such as bioethanol, amino acids and organic acids, and various bulk commodity chemicals, such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene and their derivatives. This theoretical work showed that a two-fold increase of the world wheat reserves could lead to the production of many chemical products via bioprocessing without any reduction in the food outlets of wheat. The economic analysis demonstrated that wheat could compete with conventional fermentation feedstocks, such as sugar and starch derivatives, in terms of profitability. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.