Biobased chemicals in a carbon-restricted world

In the quest for a more sustainable society, researchers, policy makers, and businesses are looking for options to reduce the use of fossil resources. Replacing these with renewable resources is a way to both ensure long-term material and energy security and reduce CO2 emissions. 1 Biomass based products are relevant in this context, but it is important to select the routes that are most beneficial in the context of an integrated energy and materials system. In such an integrated system biomass should be used primarily to produce “drop-in” chemicals for the petrochemicals industry like ethylene, propylene, methanol and benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX). To study the sustainability of biobased BTX a complex life cycle analysis was conducted looking at several products from woody biomass. In this paper we argue that production of biobased BTX yields good economic and environmental benefits for the following reasons: