Springer International Publishing
Cham
Springer
40538
2196-5641
Chemical and Biological Technologies in Agriculture
Chem. Biol. Technol. Agric.
Life Sciences
Agriculture
Organic Chemistry
Plant Biochemistry
Soil Science & Conservation
Plant Physiology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
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2014
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2014
The Author(s)
2014
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10.1186/s40538-014-0005-1
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Green chemistry, sustainable agriculture and processing systems: a Brazilian overview
Review
Biomass Usage in Brazil
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9
2014
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2014
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2014
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Perlatti et al.
2014
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
Bruno
Perlatti
bperlatti@gmail.com
Moacir
R
Forim
mrforim@ufscar.br
Vânia
G
Zuin
vaniaz@ufscar.br
Laboratory of Natural Products, Department of Chemistry
Federal University of São Carlos
Rodovia Washington Luís, km 235
13565-905
São Carlos
Brazil
Department of Chemistry
University of Waterloo
200 University Ave. W, N2L 3G1
Waterloo
Canada
Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, Department of Chemistry
The University of York
Heslington
YO10 5DD
York
UK
Abstract
There is a pressing need for renewable and optimal use of resources towards sustainable primary production and processing systems worldwide. Current technologies for food and feedstock production are held accountable for several environmental problems, such as for instance soil and water contamination due to the use of hazardous substances, generation of toxic products and even excess of biomass that is considered waste. To minimize or solve these questions in order to produce an adequate quantity of reliable and healthy food, fibers and other products and energy, new paradigms focusing on sustainable agriculture, bio-based industries or biorefineries have emerged over the last decades. Biorefineries integrate sustainable and environmentally friendly concepts of Green Chemistry with intelligent and integrated farming processes, optimizing the agricultural production. Thermochemical and biochemical processes are excellent alternatives for the production of new classes of renewable biofuels and feedstock, showing relatively small impact on greenhouse gas emissions and important pathways to obtain platform chemicals. This review discusses the current and incipient technological developments for using biomass to generate bio-based chemicals over the last decade, focusing on Green Chemistry concepts towards sustainable agriculture and processing models in Brazil.
Keywords
Green chemistry
Sustainable agriculture
Environmental sustainability
Biorefinery
Biofuel
Platform chemical
Brazilian context
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:
10.1186/s40538-014-0005-1
) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
ftp_PUB_14-09-05_05-10-18.zip40538-2014-Article-5.pdfPDF1.3