THE PRODUCTION OF BIOMATERIALS FROM AGRO-INDUSTRIAL WASTE

Agricultural residues are an attractive source of several chemicals that may be transformed into high value-added products using a wide range of novel chemical or microbiological treatments to optimize their use. Their exploitation is a topic of environmental and economic importance. The production of biomaterials from a range of agricultural wastes has been achieved through extraction or fermentation processes either with pretreatment to obtain fermentable sugars or without pretreatment using solid-state fermentation. The fermentable sugars can be used as feedstock in biotechnological processes, in order to obtain bioenergy in the form of heat, electricity and biofuels, as well as high-added value biomaterials. At present, the majority of research is being conducted to obtain bioproducts through fermentation. Because of their economic importance, the production of biomaterials such as enzymes, biopolymers, biosolvents, biosurfactants, organic acids and pigments, have been extensively studied. In this paper, research surrounding the production of these biomaterials by fermentation over the past five years is discussed, highlighting the product yield from each process.