Potential of Soya as a raw material for a whole crop biorefinery

Application of Soybean including its bean virgin oil and residual straw in a whole-crop biorefinery was highlighted. Compared to other conventional raw materials, soybean contains all the necessary block raw materials to constitute a biorefinery unit. Virgin oil extract of soybean can be used to produce biodiesel through transesterification reaction. Soybean residual straw contains a sufficient amount of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin for producing a variety of biomaterials, biofuels and biochemicals. Pulp mills which produce cellulosic fibers look like a biorefinery plant: nearly pure separated cellulose are used today mostly as paper; through the process after separation and solubilization, lignin and hemicelluloses are remained as black liquor and incinerated in recovery boiler. The main demands of power for running pulp mill comes from this recovered heat. The heat thus produced covers largely the energy needs of the pulp mill, which may then become a net producer of electricity. This review gathers the different technologies of soybean processing in a third generation of biorefinery, so called whole crop biorefinery. Biochemical transformation of soybean oil to biodiesel was explained following the processing of straw. Then, extraction of biopolymers rom soybean straw with different procedures was described. Finally, integration of the whole crop in a biorefinery system was proposed to produce different value added biofuels, biomaterials and biochemicals.