In past several decades, extensive research has been performed regarding the possibilities of using renewable resources for the production of chemicals and fuels instead of fossil resources, which will eventually become rare and therefore expensive. Increasing the use of materials based on renewable resources for packaging and other applications not only holds significant advantages in economic...

Biorefinery aims at the conversion of biomass and renewable feedstocks into fuels and platform chemicals, in analogy to conventional oil refinery. In the past years, the scientific community has defined a number of primary building blocks that can be obtained by direct biomass decomposition. However, the large potential of this "renewable chemical space" to contribute to the generation of value...

Naturally occurring polymers have been utilized for a long time as materials, however, their application as plastics has been restricted because of their limited thermoplastic processability. Recently, the microbial synthesis of polyesters directly from carbohydrate sources has attracted considerable attention. The industrial-scale production of poly(lactic acid) from lactic acid generated by f...

It is our pleasure to introduce this Thematic Series on CO2 chemistry for the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry (BJOC). Today’s growing demand for energy, materials and chemicals has prompted renewed interest in CO2 chemistry. More resource-efficient chemical processes are being implemented, while we are facing the change from a fossil fuel-based society to one that must rely on the sustai...

Major goals for the future of transportation materials include reduced weight of components, reduced cost of materials and increased use of renewable content. Reinforcement of transportation composites with plant fibers has the potential to decrease component weight relative to glass fiber reinforcement, reduce cost of materials relative to carbon fiber reinforcement, and significantly increase...

The vast majority of commodity materials are obtained from petrochemical feedstocks. These resources will plausibly be depleted within the next 100 years, and the peak in global oil production is estimated to occur within the next few decades. In this regard, biomass represents an abundant carbon-neutral renewable resource for the production of polymers. Here we report a new strategy, based on ...