Enzymes - tools to upgrade biomass to high-value products

The natural resources both on land and in water are subject to steadily increasing demands on a global level due to the growing world population, climate change, depletion of fossil raw materials and increasing environmental load. The urge to ensure optimal, cascaded use of biomass resources has been the driving force for various existing biorefinery and bioeconomy initiatives. In biorefineries biomass is processed in a sustainable manner to various marketable products and energy. Bioeconomy can be seen as an expansion of the biorefinery concept as it includes also the exploitation of biological phenomena in processing of non-biological raw materials or production of non-bio products exploiting certain biological principles