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Carbohydrate-Based Agro-Industrial Waste
Published in Anil Kumar Anal, Parmjit S. Panesar, Valorization of Agro-Industrial Byproducts, 2023
Agricultural biomass is abundant worldwide, and it can be considered an alternative source of renewable and sustainable materials that can be used as potential materials for different applications. Biomass is all organic matter, including crops, food, plants and plant wastes, forestry residues, industrial wastes, animal residues, and domestic wastes that can be used as a source of energy, generally referred to as plant or plant-based material. On the other hand, lignocellulose is the main structural constituent of plants, mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose is a homopolymer of anhydroglucose units linked together via β-1,4-glycosidic bonds, in contrast with hemicelluloses, which are complex amorphous polymers that consist of pentose and hexose monomers and exist in the cell wall in association with lignin, a natural amorphous phenol. The hydrolysis of hemicellulose is easier than crystalline cellulose, but lignin has a higher energy density than hemicellulose and cellulose (Ribeiro et al., 2021).
Advancements Towards Biomass Conversion for Sustainable Management of Solid Waste
Published in Prakash K. Sarangi, Latika Bhatia, Biotechnology for Waste Biomass Utilization, 2023
Akanksha Kulshreshtha, Soumya Sasmal, Minakshi Sahu, O. N. Tiwari
Biomass is the umbrella term that includes, plant, animal, algae, wood, food waste, or any organic matter that can be used for energy generation. Biomass is a renewable and potential source of future energy generation (Rajmohan and Varjani, 2019). Biomass generation is a kind of natural phenomenon. That’s why it is a renewable source of energy generation. Modern sustainability lies in harnessing maximum energy and power generation from renewable sources of energy. The energy generation from biomass is a multistep process, it starts with the collection of municipal solid waste (MSW) from various sources of MSW generation like, households, institutions, treated biomedical waste, construction sites, etc. All the waste is collected at accumulation/dumping sites. After that, the waste is segregated on the basis of its physicochemical properties, further, the waste or biomass is pre-treated and later used for the generation of energy, either by the use of thermochemical conversion process or by the use of biochemical conversion methods (Chung, 2013) as depicted by the Figure 7.3 (flowchart).
Linking Microgrids with Renewable Generation
Published in Stephen A. Roosa, Fundamentals of Microgrids, 2020
Biofuels are used for electrical generation in microgrids. The traditional way to generate electricity using primary biomass materials is by direct combustion. The City of Burlington, Vermont uses wood from managed forestry operations to generate baseload electricity for its microgrid. Biomass can also be processed using gasification technologies to create suitable fuels to generate electricity. Ethanol is normally used as a transportation fuel but is corrosive and is difficult to transport long distances in pipelines. An alternative is to use it to generate electricity. Brazil is the world’s second largest ethanol producer after the U.S. The city of Juiz de Fora (population 150,000) in Minas Geris generates electricity with ethanol made from sugar cane [10]. The plant, a simple-cycle, natural gas system, uses a converted 43.5 MW combustor and has an operating capacity of 87 MW [10].
Combined ultrasonic/subcritical water hydrolysis pretreatments for agricultural biomass
Published in Environmental Technology, 2023
Amanda Rampelotto de Azevedo, Maicon Sérgio Nascimento dos Santos, Crisleine Perinazzo Draszewski, Fernanda de Castilhos, Ederson Rossi Abaide, Giovani Leone Zabot, Marcus Vinícius Tres
Lignocellulose-based materials are valuable feedstocks explored as a highly prominent resource in the renewable energy approach as an alternative to the exacerbated use of fossil fuels [1,2]. Globally, more than 200 billion tons of lignocellulosic residues are produced every year in essentially forestry and agricultural systems [3]. Biomass is the main sustainable source for the production of biofuels and renewable energy. Also, different chemical compounds present in these materials result in different chemical properties, accentuating the potential of application [4]. The extracted constituents of biomass composite materials are crucial to the synthesis of high value-added products [5]. Obtaining high value-added products enhances the exploitation of biomass with favourable environmental and social impacts, such as job creation and high economic viability [4]. Cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin are the key components fundamentally found in larger scales in this type of by-product (Figure 1) [6,7]. These constituents are rich in oligosaccharides and complex organic polymers, such as lipids and proteins, valuable compounds extracted widely designed for industrial application [8]. This characteristic motivates the improvement of pre-treatment technologies that aim to fragment the plant matrix and break cell wall barriers, facilitating the extraction of compounds [9].
A review on performance, economic, and environmental analyses of integrated solid oxide fuel cell and biomass gasification systems
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2022
Anil Erdogan, Beyza Dursun, C. Ozgur Colpan, Azize Ayol
Biomass (e.g., agricultural waste, animal waste, organic fraction of municipal solid waste, and biological treatment plant sludges) can be converted into energy through biological (aerobic digestion, anaerobic digestion, and fermentation) and thermochemical (pyrolysis, combustion, gasification, liquefaction, and esterification) methods. Among these methods, gasification of biomass creates a gas mixture with a high calorific value called synthesis gas (syngas), which mainly consists of carbon-monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen, (H2), methane (CH4), and nitrogen (N2), but also impurities such as chlorine (Cl2), ash, and tar (Martín 2016). This process can occur in a fixed bed (downdraft or updraft), fluidized bed, or entrained bed reactor. The heat necessary for the gasification reactions can be supplied externally (allothermal gasification) or through partial oxidizing of hydrocarbon inside the gasifier (autothermal gasification). Syngas can be used to obtain chemicals such as acetone, ethanol, methanol, higher alcohols, hydrocarbons, and oxygenates (gasoline additives) by passing them through a series of chemical processes (Cheng et al. 2017). On the other hand, syngas can be used to generate electricity using technologies such as internal combustion engines, gas turbines, and SOFC after passing it through a clean-up process (Shi et al. 2020).
Thermogravimetric analysis of the torrefied Austrian pine
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2022
Biomass, a new scope of clean energy production, can be converted into gas or liquid fuel through various thermochemical methods, such as gasification, pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion, fermentation, and transesterification. The stored chemical energy can also be extracted through the direct burning of the solid fuel for heat and power. The high moisture content, low heating value, hygroscopic nature, and low bulk density make biomass a low conversion fuel. Apart from the energetic aspect, the poor mechanical property of biomass also poses serious difficulty to mill it. The cost of transportation and storage is also high for raw biomass. Therefore, it is essential to blend it with conventional fuel so that overall dependence on fossil fuel can be curtailed to some extent. A developmental epoch in the field of power plant engineering brought some fuel processing methods to address the shortcomings of biomass. Among the known processing scheme, torrefaction and densification are noteworthy schemes for producing a solid fuel. Between 2010 and 2012, torrefaction was introduced in a preliminary phase when several power plants in Europe was expanded their feedstock inventory by 10,000–60,000 Mg per year. The market value of torrefied biomass is very promising, and it was evaluated that the application of torrefied materials could be extended from thermal power plants to domestic boilers (Rosendahl 2013). Although the qualitative aspect of torrefied biomass was successfully tested under a pilot scheme, yet some chemical and physical evaluation, and its impact on thermal conversion are to be explored.