Biochemistry & industrial biotech
Industrial biotechnology is carbon accounting: selectivity comes free, throughput is paid for, and the yield ceiling is known in advance.
The industrial sector is the bioeconomy’s most quantitative: every target molecule has a theoretical yield from sugar, and an honest page names that ceiling and shows where industry actually stands. Four clusters: platform chemicals — the monomers everything else stands on; specialty & fine chemicals — small volumes, high margins; polymers & materials — the same feedstock assembled into stuff; enzymes & biocatalysis — catalysts that make selectivity free and stability expensive.
The recurring motif is the titre–rate–yield trade: the organism is optimised for its own survival, not for your product, and engineering always buys one at another’s expense. The second motif is separation cost: more often than not it is not the fermentation but the recovery from a dilute broth that decides a product’s fate.
The entry point is platform chemicals: the carbon-ceiling logic runs through every molecule there.
Platform chemicals
The fate of a bio-based chemical is decided by separation and by the buyer, not by the chemistry; petrochemical by-products are brutal competition; and biology …
9 pages
Specialty & fine chemicals
Thirty-six subjects, from fermenter foam to foundry sand — held together by two patterns: the product that poisons its own production, and the mechanism that …
37 pages
Polymers & materials
Thirty-three subjects from lignin roads to dissolvable circuit boards — held together by a property that keeps showing up in disguise: the same mechanism that …
33 pages
Enzymes & biocatalysis
An enzyme gets selectivity free and pays for it with fragility; every page in this cluster is about that bargain.
6 pages