In this Critical Review, Udo Kragl and co-workers from the University of Rostock, Germany, summarize and evaluate the advantages, disadvantages and potential uses of biocatalysis to perform green chemistry. The work also considers how efficient such production methods are and how important biotechnology is for future greener industrial chemistry.
The review will look at and evaluate representative examples of industrial chemistry where state of the art enzymes and microorganisms are used, and compare several biocatalytic processes to their chemical alternatives. Throughout the article, the authors highlight that continuous improvement is required in order to overcome existing limitations and turn biotechnological processes into standard tools in the chemical industry (look out for the ‘Critical remark’ boxes which illustrate these points). Future trends for the biocatalytic reduction of amides and the asymmetric hydrogenation of olefins are also discussed.
To read more, please click on the link below:
Industrial biotechnology—the future of green chemistry? Stefanie Wenda, Sabine Illner, Annett Mell and Udo Kragl, Green Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1GC15579B
This article is free to access until the 17th November 2011!
