What’s white biotech?

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White biotechnology is biotechnology used for industrial purposes. Industries that incorporate white biotechnology use living organisms, organic materials, or chemical components of living organisms such as enzymes in the manufacturing process. Applications of white biotechnology currently in use or being researched include manufacturing processes, creation of biomaterials, and alternative energy sources. In addition to purely commercial benefits, white biotechnology is also being studied as a way to make industry more environmentally friendly by providing less polluting energy sources, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and creating industrial processes with fewer polluting by-products.

The white description is used to differentiate industrial biotechnology from red biotechnology used in medicine and green biotechnology used in agriculture. The boundaries between these fields are blurred. For example, growing plants or mushrooms for use in the mass production of drugs has both white and red biotech elements. Biofuels could possibly be produced using plants genetically modified for that specific purpose and would straddle the line between green and white biotech. White biotechnology is the least developed of these fields and many of its potential applications will require further development before becoming economically viable.

Biological processes are based on chemical processes, so white biotechnology is incorporated into many manufacturing processes and products that involve chemical reactions. Some chemicals used in industry, such as some polymers and acids, can be produced biologically rather than by conventional means. Industrial enzymes can be used in chemical-intensive processes such as papermaking and the treatment of textiles and leather for clothing. Cleaning products made with this type of biotechnology, such as laundry and dishwashing detergents, use enzymes instead of conventional inorganic chemicals.

Another application is bioenergy, the production of electricity and fuel from the chemical energy in biomass. An advantage of this is that bioenergy can be produced from agricultural by-products such as straw, manure and sugar cane residues. Biomass can also come from crops grown for that specific purpose, such as corn, soybeans, and some types of grass. Algae are also being researched as a possible source of bioenergy. Bioenergy is used in power plants and biofuels such as ethanol, biodiesel and bioether. Environmental concerns have been a major impetus to biofuel research, as biofuels generally burn cleaner than fossil fuels, are a renewable resource, and create a use for materials that might otherwise simply be discarded as waste.

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