Editorial: new knowledge, new products and new processes

Abstract

New knowledge, new products and new processes The scientific, economic and social scenarios present numerous opportunities for material innovation. This situation has some important determinants, with emphasis on the new concepts and tools that make up the nanoscience and the nanotechnologies, the wish to move to a sustainable global economy, the search for alternatives to oil as a source of energy, raw-materials and fertilizers and the migration of big populations to new consuming patterns, especially in Brazil, India and China. Many actions involving the scientific research and both product and process development may respond simultaneously to several opportunities, having convergent results. The transition to sustainability and the necessity of a gradual oil replacement lead to a great appreciation of the raw-materials from agriculture as well as of abundant minerals, the use of which does not imply high energy consumption or environmental costs. On the other hand, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and the information technologies are allowing the upcoming of a lot of new functional materials that fulfill new functions in human life and their corresponding productive processes but according to energy and natural-resource saving patterns. Brazil has an extremely favorable position in this scenario, with a high potential of energy raw-material production, such as alcohol, bio-diesel and solid biomass, which are also important chemical industry inputs, where they are transformed in monomers, plastifiers, surfactants, solvents, gums, fibers, plastics and rubbers, besides pharmaceuticals, aromas and many other kinds of products. Nowadays, the production of "commodities" up to now considered as "petrochemical" can be more economically attractive, by means of the use of the sugar-cane ethanol. Besides that, many opportunities are brought by the use of natural latexes, vegetal oils, natural fibers, as well as an ample variety of agricultural residues together with many minerals, which, through different nanotechnologies, can be transformed into sophisticated materials, such as inorganic nanotubes, nanocomposites and several kinds of unprecedented hybrids. Some especially attractive cases are research objectives of the Inomat-National Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation in Functional Complex Materials, www.inomat.iqm.unicamp.br.

Carboidratos como fonte de compostos para a indústria de química fina

“…6,7 Esses materiais fósseis são finitos e seu preço está em um patamar elevado, logo, fica evidente que haverá um aumento progressivo da indústria química com base em matérias-primas renováveis como uma necessidade inevitável para a humanidade. 8 Conjugado a essas previsões está o fato real de que a demanda de energia nos próximos 50 anos atingirá cerca de 30 a 60 TW.…”