Abstract

Opportunities for bio-based polymers in Brazil - 
Uses of biomass to produce PHA Production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) from sucrose was proposed in the past, integrating polymer production to a first generation ethanol (1G ethanol) plant in Brazil. In recent years, the production of 2nd generation ethanol (2G ethanol) from the glucose fraction, derived from sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate is under development. This is very interesting, since the amount of ethanol produced from the same sugarcane cultivated area could result on a 30% increase. Considering the sugars present in the bagasse, if ethanologenic yeast use only glucose, huge amounts of xylose will be availabe. To the moment, ethanologenic yeast strains, with high efficiency in converting xylose to ethanol, are not available to industrial application. Thus, the availability of xylose will create an opportunity for the development of other bioprocesses, resulting on new products to be introduced into a biorefinery model. The use of such enormous amounts of xylose to produce PHA can establish a second-generation of PHA production process, again integrated to a sugar and ethanol mill. Besides xylose, other intermediates or byproducts resulted from sugarcane bagasse hydrolysis can also be used as cosubstrates, or even to generate cosubstrates such as levulinic acid, that could be applied to the production of PHA copolymers. In addition, sugarcane bagasse could also be used in other mixed microbial fermentations (MMFA) to generate medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) that can also be used as cosubstrates to produce PHA copolymers. Those aspects and perspectives will be presented. Key words – Polyhydroxyalkanoates, hemicellulose, xylose, pentoses, biorefineries, sugarcane bagasse, medium-chain-fatty acids, mixed microbial fermentation Apoio FAPESP BIOEN