Exploding sugar beets are the new raw material suppliers

Green chemistry for raw material extraction
Increasingly, as raw material suppliers, plants are also becoming interesting for the chemical industry. Especially those that are already grown on a large scale and very efficiently. This applies in full to the sugar beet, whose cultivation has been optimized over decades.

In order to optimize the further processing of beet sugar for the production of chemical substances, scientists from Wageningen University together with a research consortium have made the implementation of sugar cheaper and faster by means of a special process. For this purpose, the so-called "vacuum extrusion" is used, in which the cell walls literally explode and release the sugar contained in the cell quickly. Here, the focus is no longer on the production of sugar crystals, but on the implementation of the sugar in the fermentation process, for example, to win ethanol or acetone.

New green chemistry. Image: cameleonpictures - fotolia

In order to obtain maximum yield, the microorganisms must be able to start as soon as possible with the "work". Advantages of the process are that the whole turnip can be used, that no long preprocessing is necessary and that the process does not require high temperatures or increased pressure ratios. That saves time and energy. All this was achieved on a laboratory scale, but there are still hurdles in switching to the large fermenter of the university facility, according to the scientists. Among other things, one still struggles with the high viscosity of the mass to be processed, but such "bottlenecks" are not insurmountable.

Sustainable processes for green chemistry thus seem to be on the rise. How this is to be assessed in competition with food production is another matter.
Friederike Heidenhof, aid