Catalysis is part of the 12 principles of green chemistry proposed by Anastas and Warner and it plays a major role in the development of sustainable reactions and processes. In this scenario, biotransformation and green chemistry of renewable resources are the core technologies at basis of the circular economy. In the last decades several progresses had been made allowing the rise of an entire new productivity sector within EU27 the so-called BioBased Industry.
Particularly, in the advanced biofuels sector major scientific breakthroughs allowed the establishment of industrial scale exploitation of lignocellulose waste: in record time several pilot plants had been inaugurated in Italy, Romania, Estonia, Belgium etc. These first successes on production of ecofriendly and renewable BioEthanol opened the way for further exploitation of bioresources into a plethora of new bioproducts.
The talk will encompass the major bioprocessing technology for lignocellulose transformation and show practical examples of the modern BioBased economy. Moreover, some heterogenous catalysts involved in the conversion of glycerol into value added compounds will be presented. One of the most important and largely employed sustainable metric (the E-factor) will be discussed as well.