Chemicals

The "chemicals" industry includes commodity chemicals, pharmaceuticals, specialty and fine chemicals, plastics, and enzymes. It is a major manufacturing sector: in the United States, it has accounted for about 18% of all manufacturing sales for the last 20 years. It is also a major consumer of energy and non-renewable resources and a major source of waste.

Fine chemicals
In the fine chemicals segment, the impact of biocatalysis has been strong, owing in part to the ready acceptance of enzymes by organic chemists and the low entry barrier (low investment costs) for new technologies in this small-scale industry. Despite a four-fold increase in chemicals output, biocatalysis has reduced waste by 20%. While biocatalysis is the major source of cleaner production in this sector, reduction of solvents and their reuse have also contributed to more environmentally friendly production processes.

Various parts of the industry are experimenting with the new tools offered by biotechnology. Of particular interest is the possibility of using biobased resources as feedstocks in the larger volume sectors. While biobased manufacturing will not necessarily always be cleaner, it is certain that wastes from biobased manufacturing will be more compatible with conventional wastewater treatment systems.

Biotechnology has improved the production of certain crop protection chemicals, such as glyphosate. The DuPont Company, for instance, has announced a new process for producing this broad-spectrum herbicide using enzymes cloned from spinach and yeast to create a catalyst capable of oxidizing glycolic acid to glyoxylic acid. This greatly reduces the number of steps in the overall process and reduces loss of product to waste streams.

A biological reaction has recently come to be used in the manufacture of a major industrial chemical, acrylamide. Acrylamide is used in synthetic fibers, flocculating agents, etc. The conventional process involves hydration of the nitrile with sulfuric acid and/or the use of inorganic catalysts. The use of the enzyme nitrile hydratase is among the first uses of biotechnology in the chemicals industry.

Pharmaceuticals

Today, many pharmaceuticals are semi-synthetic molecules, in that part of their structure is synthesized by a living organism and later modified by chemical processing. Thanks to biocatalysis, optimized fermentation, and replacement of organic solvents by water, modern biotechnology contributes to cleaner production of such semi-synthetic antibiotics.

Adopting enzymes to replace chemical catalysts requires drawing together the disciplines of chemistry, microbiology and biochemical engineering. While this is easy in the pharmaceutical industry, "the spectrum of expertise seldom exists elsewhere", says Professor Mike Turner, CEO of Ensynthase Engineering, a company that provides the biological expertise other companies need to assess and adopt biocatalysis.