4
rAcCoA
Oxygen-sensitive reductive acetyl-CoA pathway
RAFT
Reversible
addition
fragmentation
chain-transfer
polymerization
rPP cycle
Reductive pentose phosphate cycle
rTCA
Reductive tricarboxylic acid cycle
SPPS
Solid-phase peptide synthesis
SSD
Succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase
THF
Tetrahydrofuran
1.1 Introduction
The demand for polymers has been growing for several decades, and the world
plastic materials production almost reached 350 million tons in 2017 including thermoplastics, polyurethanes, thermosets, elastomers, adhesives, coatings, sealants,
and polypropylene fibers according to the marketing report realized by PlasticsEurope
Market Research Group (PEMRG)/Conversio Market & Strategy GmbH (https://
www.plasticseurope.org/en/resources/publications/619-plastics-facts-2018). The
worldwide increase in demand should be paralleled by the deployment of scientific/
technological endeavors to meet the need to mitigate the associated environmental
impact (air and marine environment pollution) and the societal and financial costs.
In this context, greenhouse gas emissions resulting from raw material extraction and
processing account for around 30% of the natural capital costs of plastic materials.
To relieve the concerning CO 2 emissions in the atmosphere, particularly intense
research activities point at the transformation of CO 2 into chemical building blocks
for polymer synthesis. Biotechnologies based on CO 2 transformation would achieve
the double effect of obtaining commercially viable polymeric products from cumbering gaseous emissions and of reducing the dependence of the chemical industry
on dwindling fossil fuels.
Ideally, CO 2 could be utilized in chemicals supply chains in a wide variety of
ways ranging from the direct usage of CO 2 as monomer in chemicals synthesis to
indirect usages, with CO 2 representing, for instance, a precursor for the production
of monomers in the chemicals supply chains. In spite of CO 2 abundance, economic
cost, and lack of toxicity, CO 2 coupling with chemical feedstocks in polymer synthesis is hindered by CO 2 thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness. As a matter
of fact, to effectively transform CO 2 into useful chemicals, CO 2 must be combined
with high-energy reactant or adopt harsh operative conditions such as high pressure
and temperature. Furthermore, chemical catalysts could be toxic and lack selectivity. The latter aspect is limiting when aspiring towards synthesis of increasingly
complex and well-defined polymers. Thus only a handful of processes have succeeded in the large-scale use of carbon dioxide, examples being the industrial production of polycarbonates (Aresta and Dibenedetto 2007; He et al. 2013).
Over the past few years, the development of approaches utilizing CO 2 in the polymer industry has started to benefit from the integration of conventional chemical
A. A. Azim et al.
rAcCoA
Oxygen-sensitive reductive acetyl-CoA pathway
RAFT
Reversible
addition
fragmentation
chain-transfer
polymerization
rPP cycle
Reductive pentose phosphate cycle
rTCA
Reductive tricarboxylic acid cycle
SPPS
Solid-phase peptide synthesis
SSD
Succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase
THF
Tetrahydrofuran
1.1 Introduction
The demand for polymers has been growing for several decades, and the world
plastic materials production almost reached 350 million tons in 2017 including thermoplastics, polyurethanes, thermosets, elastomers, adhesives, coatings, sealants,
and polypropylene fibers according to the marketing report realized by PlasticsEurope
Market Research Group (PEMRG)/Conversio Market & Strategy GmbH (https://
www.plasticseurope.org/en/resources/publications/619-plastics-facts-2018). The
worldwide increase in demand should be paralleled by the deployment of scientific/
technological endeavors to meet the need to mitigate the associated environmental
impact (air and marine environment pollution) and the societal and financial costs.
In this context, greenhouse gas emissions resulting from raw material extraction and
processing account for around 30% of the natural capital costs of plastic materials.
To relieve the concerning CO 2 emissions in the atmosphere, particularly intense
research activities point at the transformation of CO 2 into chemical building blocks
for polymer synthesis. Biotechnologies based on CO 2 transformation would achieve
the double effect of obtaining commercially viable polymeric products from cumbering gaseous emissions and of reducing the dependence of the chemical industry
on dwindling fossil fuels.
Ideally, CO 2 could be utilized in chemicals supply chains in a wide variety of
ways ranging from the direct usage of CO 2 as monomer in chemicals synthesis to
indirect usages, with CO 2 representing, for instance, a precursor for the production
of monomers in the chemicals supply chains. In spite of CO 2 abundance, economic
cost, and lack of toxicity, CO 2 coupling with chemical feedstocks in polymer synthesis is hindered by CO 2 thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness. As a matter
of fact, to effectively transform CO 2 into useful chemicals, CO 2 must be combined
with high-energy reactant or adopt harsh operative conditions such as high pressure
and temperature. Furthermore, chemical catalysts could be toxic and lack selectivity. The latter aspect is limiting when aspiring towards synthesis of increasingly
complex and well-defined polymers. Thus only a handful of processes have succeeded in the large-scale use of carbon dioxide, examples being the industrial production of polycarbonates (Aresta and Dibenedetto 2007; He et al. 2013).
Over the past few years, the development of approaches utilizing CO 2 in the polymer industry has started to benefit from the integration of conventional chemical
A. A. Azim et al.