This publication addresses the large possibilities of starch as an industrial raw material. Starch is industrially produced on a large scale, from various plants such as corn, tapioca and potato. It is renewable, “green” and cheap.

Although the starches from these plants differ, the current application areas are the same. Besides the classical applications of starch in food products, their use as adhesives and in the paper and textile industry, new applications such as bioplastics are being developed.

Currently a relatively small number of chemicals are used industrially for modification. By varying the degree of modification and the combination of different modifications a large number of products can be prepared. New possibilities are created by the use of new chemicals and the preparation of highly substituted products in non conventional solvents, such as aqueous alcohols. Using newly developed enzymes also increases the scope of applications.

This book describes a number of new developments and addresses topics such as:
•  Relation between granular structure and derivatization
•  Derivatization in aqueous alcohol
•  New starch esters
•  Use of spacers in derivatization
•  Enzymatic derivatization

The book is meant for the (industrial) starch researcher as well as for everyone else interested in the derivatization and application of polysaccharides and natural polymers.