ABSTRACT
Masayuki Shirai,1 Osamu Sato,2 and Aritomo Yamaguchi2,3 1Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, IWATE University, Morioka, Japan 2 Research Center for Compact Chemical System, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Sendai, Japan
6.1 INTRODUCTION
Using numerous industrial processes, which have been developed in the twentieth century, various useful chemical products are manufactured from petroleum. In pursuing the efcient usage of fossil fuel resources, both as a raw material and as an energy source, process technology for their mass production has been successfully developed over the past several years. Their mass consumption was also encouraged for economic development. On the contrary, large-scale disposal of used products and emission of carbon dioxide through incineration have become problematic for the environment and for human beings. To make current activities sustainable, in addition to conventional fossil resources, a technology that uses organic wastes as a supplementary resource for production of raw chemical materials should be developed. Also, new processes would require that the raw materials and their by-products cause less stress to the human body and to the environment, while also having production efciency equal to or greater than the current petroleum-based system.
