Industrial Application of Enzymes on Carbohydrate Based Materials

This book provides an overall increase in awareness, understanding and implementation of the recent great advances in the production and application of industrail enzymes on carbohydrate materials. The field of industrial enzyme application has grown tremendously in the last ten years, because of the high specificity of enzymes to catalyze industrial processing reactions,the availablity of thousands of enzymes, and ,especially, the rapid growth of protein engineerign and genetically modified organismsto dramatically reduce production times and costs for new enzymes. Industrial enzymes also offer more environmentally friendly and scaleable industrial processes for the conversion of carbohydrate based materials into a diversity of value-added products, inculding the new 'biofuels'. The book focuses on carbohydrate materials as they are renewable, and the most abundant and relatively low cost organic materials in nature such as lignocellulosic waste biomass, especially compared to traditional petroleum and gas feedstocks of ever increasing costs. Multiple industries are purposely highlighted so that various viewpoints can be exchanged. The chapters are arranged into four particularly fast-growing areas: (1) biofuel and industrial chemicals, (2) food industry, (3) textile industry sector, and (4) basic research to underpin future advances. With contributing authors from industry, government, and academia, worldwide, the book provides an up-to-date review of this exciting and rapidly developing field.