Current strategies for industrial plastic production from non-edible biomass

Realistically replacing petroleum-based plastics will require efficient routes to performance polymers using scalable processes from abundantly available lignocellulosic biomass. We surveyed academic and patent literature for processes in the latest stages of commercial development to draw out design strategies that have enabled their success. We found that these processes consist of chemocatalytic transformations of non-edible biomass to rigid plastic precursors with high drop-in readiness via a stable, hydrophobic, and distillable platform molecule. However, due to the deoxygenated nature of these precursors, the processes suffer from low biomass utilization efficiency and high process complexity–thereby limiting their sustainability. We discuss our group's preliminary efforts to design novel monomers with lower drop-in readiness, but with increased process efficiency and simplicity from biomass.