Conversion of Biomass and Waste to Value-add Products: Challenges and Opportunities

Biomass either terrestrial or marine biomasses are essential source of renewable energy in terms of syn-gas production or extraction of valuable chemicals. Nowadays, energy crisis is a major problem not only in India, but all across the world due to shortage of conventional fuels. Researchers, today mostly focus on efficient way of utilization of bio energy for thermo chemical conversions such as pyrolysis, gasification, liquefaction, carbonization and combustion. These methods are promising technology in the recent times for its low carbon footprint and less carbon dioxide emission. While in case of conventional energy source caused several problems due to high emission of greenhouse gases. So the current trend is to find out alternate energy source and is simultaneously to investigate different pathways for reduction of pollution level in the atmosphere. For this to meet the energy consumption, although addressing the importance of energy security and environmental impact has grown interest in the alternate fuels instead of fossil fuels. Biomass is one of the solutions to meet the above challenges due to its carbon neutral energy sources and huge available around the world. newlineSo thermo-chemical conversions can be more fruitful to convert solid fuel to convenient gaseous form or liquid form in the downstream process. Direct combustion of biomass produces NOx, SOx from fuel-bound nitrogen and sulphur. Gasification provides the opportunity to control the level of gaseous and particulate emission, which is leading to lower down concentration particulate matters, soot particles, NOx, SOx, and the production of clean energy or valuable chemicals (e.g., CO, H2, or CH4). Much of the mass degraded during biomass decomposition at lower pyrolysis temperatures. Again, steam-gasification or gasification offers thermal treatment at elevated temperature under a reducing atmosphere that leads to fuel-bound nitrogen and sulphur formed into N2 or H2S or any other gases can be removed by absorption beds.

Author(s): Sherif Elshokary, Sherif Faraga, Osayed Abuelyazeed, Bitu Hurisso4 and Mostafa Ismail

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