Environmental Technologies
USE OF ENZYMES IN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES IS BOTH “Ecologically Beneficial” and “HIGH TECH“ Enzymes, biodegradable themselfes, are frequently the basis of ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES. Their extensive use will save raw materials, lots of energy and considerable time and is leading to a NEW AGE of the efficient use of renewable resources. and therefore are prerequisites for the sustainability of human life.
Some of the important large scale, enzyme based technical applications listed in the application area INDUSTRIAL PROCESSING cannot stringently differentiated from technical processes listed in ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES.
Many technical processes can be improved by use of enzymes to be more efficient and to avoid environmental pollution by reducing application of hazardous aggressive chemicals. Therefore major technical processes like Fiber and Yarn, Processing, Leather Processing., Paper & Pulp Processing, Textile Processing and Food & Feed Processing, are already established technologies with environmental impact and with certain market volumes. They are compiled in INDUSTRIAL PROCESSING.
The same is true for CLEANING applications using enzymatic power with high environmental benefits, which are e.g. reduced phosphate load to rivers and lakes and reduced energy consumption with lower temperature washing and time reduction for cleaning.
Important ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES are improved by enzymes to be more efficient. Applications of enzymes listed in ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES focus on the environmental aspect in improving processes which are typically in environmental discussion like Renewable Raw Materials, production of defined Renewable Biochemical Raw Materials and Bioenergy like Ethanol and Methanol Production as well as improving BioGas production.
In processing of renewable resources like bioproducts, raw materials and defined (bio-) chemicals enzyme based procedures are more and more used in order to have high specific reactions combined with high efficiency and working in water as solvent at low temperatures if necessary.
More and more enzyme based technologies are for Detoxification of soil, fresh water, waste and waste water. Cleaning of fluids is a field of high diversity and different applications can be classified in different application areas like INDUSTRIAL PROCESSING or in application fields like beverage processing. The effects of such an enzymatic treatment are reduction of viscosity, degradation of floating particles or enzymatic-chemical conversion of molecules.
All this decontamination procedures have to be tested by Environmental Analytics continously on their effectiveness and residual tolerable concentrations. e.g. for Environmental Analytics the specific detection of certain substances like Nitrate or Heavy Metals is an enzyme based test system availlable with high sensitivity and specificity.