The New Biomassters - Convention on Biological Diversity

Part II – <strong>The</strong> Tools and Players
In an apt fable for today’s
bioeconomy, the dwarf
Rumpelstiltskin exacted a
very human cost for his
technology of spinning straw
into gold. Illustration of
Rumpelstiltskin from
Household Stories by the
Brothers Grimm, 1886.
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> Bio-Alchemy
– Tooling up for the grab
Dreams of transforming cheap biomass into valuable
commodities are nothing new. In a German folk tale collected
in the 19th century, a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin spins
straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin was, in part, a caricature of
contemporary alchemists (alchemy meaning ‘transformation’)
who sought ways to turn base natural materials into highly
valued products. Indeed, an entire branch of alchemy,
Spagyrics, was dedicated to transforming plant matter to
higher purposes. 165 Some of the central alchemical quests, such
as the search to develop panaceas and to create a universal
solvent that would reduce all matter to its constituent parts,
have echoes in today’s efforts to develop plant cellulases
(enzymes that break down cellulose) and transform straw into
cellulosic fuels and materials. <strong>The</strong>re are four broad platforms
for transforming biomass.
Combustion
<strong>The</strong> easiest way to derive value from a pile
of biomass is to put a match to it: burning
extracts the highest energy yield from
biomass. Examples of combustion
techniques include open combustion (burning with oxygen),
pyrolysis (burning without oxygen), biomass gasification
(burning at very high temperatures with controlled amounts
of oxygen) and plasma arc gasification (heating biomass with a
high voltage electrical current).
Chemistry
Just as petroleum chemists have perfected
the ‘cracking’ of complex hydrocarbon
molecules into simpler molecules using
heat, pressure and acid catalysts, similar
techniques can be used to break down carbohydrates in
biomass for transformation into fine chemicals, polymers and
other materials. <strong>The</strong>rmochemical techniques (such as the
Fischer-Tropsch process) transform lignocellulosic material
into hydrocarbons. <strong>The</strong> extraction of proteins and amino acids
yields valuable compounds. Fermentation techniques,
sometimes combined with genetic engineering and synthetic
biology (see below), can also produce proteins that can be
refined further into plastics, fuels and chemicals.
Biotechnology /
Genetic Engineering
Both fermentation of plant sugars into
alcohols and traditional plant breeding have
been used for thousands of years. Now new
genetic technologies have been introduced, which are driving
much of the industrial excitement around biomass. <strong>The</strong>se
include new approaches to genetic engineering (recombinant
DNA) to modify plants to express more cellulose or to more
readily break down for fermentation or to grow in less
favourable soils and climatic conditions. More recently,
synthetic biology (see below) allows for the development of
novel organisms that are either more efficient at harvesting
sunlight or nitrogen or that can generate entirely novel
enzymes (biologically active proteins). Such enzymes are used
to carry out chemical reactions or to produce new compounds
from plant material.
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>Biomassters</strong> 35