Opportunities for Bio-Based Solvents Created as Petrochemical and Fuel Products Transition towards Renewable Resources

Abstract

The global bio-based chemical market is growing in size and importance. Bio-based solvents such as glycerol and 2-methyltetrahydrofuran are often discussed as important introductions to the conventional repertoire of solvents. However adoption of new innovations by industry is typically slow. Therefore it might be anticipated that neoteric solvent systems (e.g., ionic liquids) will remain niche, while renewable routes to historically established solvents will continue to grow in importance. This review discusses bio-based solvents from the perspective of their production, identifying suitable feedstocks, platform molecules, and relevant product streams for the sustainable manufacturing of conventional solvents.

Tools and techniques for solvent selection: green solvent selection guides

“…Ethanol is included as a benchmark entry because both systems agree that it is a green solvent (ethanol is not being suggested as an alternative to any hydrocarbon solvent). Whereas the 5 The greenness of conventional hydrocarbon solvents relative to ethanol approach developed by ETH Zurich is unable to make any meaningful distinction between the greenness of the hydrocarbons, the Rowan University assessment offers greater variance across this set. Accordingly cyclohexane and n-heptane are considered to be greener than n-pentane and n-hexane, and the greenness of aromatic solvents increases with methyl group substitution.…”

“…For reviews on the topic of bio-based solvents, see the following references [4,[62][63][64]. Renewable feedstocks will need to be embraced to secure the sustainability of the chemical industry [5]. Solvent selection guides have become a vital component in the effort to enhance the greenness of the fine chemical industries, but few attempts have been made to highlight the renewability of solvents or simply just to incorporate solvents of a bio-based origin within these tools [56,65,66].…”

“…Solvents have received much attention under the remit of green chemistry [1][2][3][4][5]. This can be ascribed to the large volume of solvent typically used in a reaction (especially at the purification stage) or in a formulation [6,7].…”

Integrating a Biorefinery into an Operating Kraft Mill

“…The Australian company Circa Group developed a process to convert wood waste and other lignocellulosic materials to levoglucosenone. The latter compound then can be hydrogenated to dihydrolevoglucosenone (Cyrene TM ), a polar aprotic solvent similar to nmethylpyrrolidone (NMP) and sulfolane (Clark et al 2015;Duncan 2015).…”

Biomass Direct Liquefaction - Can This Process Become Fully Sustainable and Environmentally Friendly?

“…Although to make all the involved processes of those cycles fully sustainable, petroleum-free formulations' components are extremely needed. The use of solvents from natural sources or industrial wastes as well could and should be considered [15]. The downstream solvents employed in chemical industries, such as pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals could also be a solution.…”