Invitation to send your contributions to this SI on:
Oligosaccharide production from renewable resources
Frontiers in Chemical Engineering Journal
Topic Editors:
Héctor A. Ruiz: Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, Saltillo, Mexico
María Verónica Galván: Facultad de Ingeniería Química, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (FIQ-UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina
Alejandro Fernández-Arteaga: University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Biomass deriving from agricultural and forestry activities constitutes a renewable resource with multiple advantages due to its low cost, diversity, abundance, and availability. As biomass consists mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and other minor components, it is widely used for the production of chemicals, materials, and energy. The production of oligosaccharides from biomass is a trending topic due to their increasing use as additives in the food, pharmaceutical, and materials industry. Novel biomass-derived oligosaccharides entail big challenges during their extraction and purification processes, which need to be addressed or new processes need to be proposed; their characteristics and full applications potential need to be determined too. New uses for agricultural and forestry residues become also a particularly hot research topic, as they can contribute to economic and technical sustainability, and can add value to the production chains.
The production of oligosaccharides involves various thermochemical, chemical, physical, and/or biochemical technologies. However, due to the variations in the characteristics and the complexity of biomass, it is necessary to develop new processing technologies, which will contribute to overcoming the difficulties in increasing yields, achieving the desired characteristics and purity of the obtained oligosaccharides, in an environmentally friendly way. Besides this, the extraction of oligosaccharides with different chemical structures, inclusion of functional groups and size, can lead to a variety of applications for the development of biomaterials, prebiotics, functional products, etc. Finally, the effective inclusion of the above technologies in the different agroindustrial chains, typical for each region, as well as the contribution to the sustainability of these processes, remain a challenge that should be addressed for their effective implementation.
This Research Topic aims to highlight processes and technologies related to the production of oligosaccharides from new biomass resources, novel oligosaccharides characteristics and applications, as well as contributing to the sustainability of the agricultural and/or forestry chains.
The types of manuscripts of interest are Original Research Papers, Methods, Mini Reviews and Reviews related to (but not limited to) the following themes:
1. Oligosaccharides derived from novel biomass sources (considering agricultural and/or forestry activities)
2. Green biomass conversion technologies for oligosaccharides production
3. Chemical and functional characterization of new biomass-derived oligosaccharides
4. Development of novel applications for oligosaccharides from biomass as biomaterials, functional products, among others
5. Contribution of oligosaccharides production process to the sustainability of the agroindustry chain production.
Keywords: oligosaccharides, biomass, biomaterials, prebiotics, agricultural, forestry
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
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