Abstract

The grinding of wheat into flour is mankind’s oldest continuously practised industrial activity and “the parent of all modern industry”. Storck and Teague (1952) observe “There is no other single thread of development that can be followed so continuously throughout all [Western] history, and none which bears so constant a cause-and-effect relation to every phase of our progress in civilization.”As Western civilization enters the new millennium, this ancient thread continues to develop new features. Cereals such as wheat are being called upon to contribute to the energy and chemical needs of society as well as its food needs, and we are seeing the emergence of cereal biorefineries aiming to compete with oil refineries. Cereal biorefineries have a strategic role to play during the next few “transition decades” in leading eventually to lignocellulosic biorefineries that will avoid the current food versus fuel issues. In the meantime, however, oil refining provides both the competition and the model for cereal biorefineries with respect to fractionation, complexity and process integration.