Unit 4

Three Things You Need to Know About Bioproducts

Welcome back, everyone! Today I'm going to tell y'all about how we turn crops into sugar, how the process of fermentation works, and finally I'll introduce you to a new biobased product that I'm super excited about. Let's dive right in.
 
Sugar
Glucose is a simple sugar (a monosaccharide), and we use it for tons of stuff, including plastics and fuel. So, how do we get glucose out of plants? First, we categorize biomass into three groups: sugar crops, starchy biomass, and lignocellulosic biomass. (Lesson 18)
 
(Plant Biomass)    
             
We get sugar from sugar crops by putting the canes or roots through a mill to extract their juice, which we then purify and refine to produce sugar. Corn is the primary starch used for sugar; to extract sugar from corn we grind it up in a mill to produce the starch which is then hydrolyzed with dilute acids or enzymes to convert into glucose. (Sugars, Starches & Cellulose Products) Extracting glucose from cellulose is a more complex process. After the biomass is pretreated, it goes through hydrolysis, in which the cellulose is broken down using acids or enzymes. Since the process is so complex and expensive, cellulose is the least commonly used biomass for producing sugar. (Lesson 18)
 
Fermentation
Now let's talk about fermentation! Fermentation is super efficient because it's a naturally occurring process. Bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms break down a substance, which allows us to get useful products out of biomass. The main reason that we're so excited about fermentation through the lens of environmental sustainability is that it can be used to produce ethanol for biofuel. When corn goes through the process of milling and saccharification to produce sugar, it gets fermented and distilled, at which step ethanol is produced as a byproduct that can be used as a biofuel. (Lesson 19)
(Lesson 19)
 
Of course, fermentation is also used to make lots of foods and beverages, like sauerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, natto, kefir, kombucha, soy sauce, and beer (Lesson 19). 
 
Transparent Wood
Finally, I'm so excited to tell y'all about this emerging biobased product, transparent wood. That's right, I'm talking about wood that's see-through like glass. It's made by removing the lignin from wood using chemical methods similar to those used in pulping but retaining the shape of the wood. The hollow tubes in the wood are then filled with a resin that turns the wood transparent when it cures. (Lesson 22) I think transparent wood would be super awesome to use as a fogged shower door in place of glass. 
 
(Making transparent wood)
 
Thanks for tuning in to the final blog in this series! I hope you all had fun and learned something new! 
 
 

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Resources - in order of appearance

1. Lesson 18: Crops to Sugar, BBE 1002, UMN

2. Plant Biomass - an overview, sciencedirect.com 

3. Legner, Erich Fred, Sugars, Starches & Cellulose Products, ucr.edu 

4. Lesson 19: Fermentation, BBE 1002, UMN 

5. Lesson 22: Other Biobased Products, BBE 1002, UMN  

6.  YouTube - NileRed, Making transparent wood, youtu.be

 

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