Future Biorefineries

Renewable Raw Materials New Feedstocks for ike Chemical Industry, First Edition. 

Edited by Roland Ulber, Dieter Sell, Thomas Hirth. 

The technology used in the petrochemical industry is well defined however due to the complexity of the biorefinery concept, a single technology wiU not provide 

With a wide variety of feedstocks and products, a number of key technologies will be required to separate and process raw materials. Clean separating techniques and reaction mediums such as supercritical CO2 will be required. The breakdown of biomass can be done in several ways such as enzymatic hydrolysis, acid hydrolysis, gasification, and pyrolysis, which will be discussed in more detail later. 

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Opinions vary widely on the optimal size of future biorefineries. However, it is our belief that biorefineries will correspond to a combination of large-scale facilities (which can take full advantage of economies of scale and enjoy greater buying power when acquiring feedstocks) and small-scale plants (which can keep transport... 

Carbohydrates would be the predominant raw materials for future biorefineries. The major polysaccharides found in nature are cellulose, hemicellulose and starch (see Chapter 1). These molecules would be mainly utilised after they are broken down to their respective monomers via enzymatic hydrolysis, thermochemical degradation or a combination of these two. Cellulose and hemicellulose, together with lignin, constitute the main structural components of biomass. Starch is the major constituent of cereal crops. This section would focus on the potential utilisation of carbohydrates and lignocellulosic biomass for chemical production. 

Clark JH, Deswarte FEI, Farmer TJ. The integration of green chemistry into future biorefineries. Biofuels Bioprod Biorefin. 2009 3(l) 72-90. 

Recent attempts aim at the controlled transformation of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin to platform molecules for a potential future biorefinery scenario. In this regard, the U.S. Department of Energy has published studies on potential future platform molecules that could be derived from renewable resources [35, 36]. Tailored transformation of biomass to these platform chemicals could serve as a starting point for biofuel production. This would allow the development of comprehensive biorefinery approaches that incorporate both the production of biofuels and chemicals. The... 

Impact on food security is one of the core social factors to be considered in the development of the use of renewable resources for biofuels and material use like the use in biorefineries. The growing market (today mainly biofuel, in future biorefineries as well) represents a new source of demand for agricultural commodities, which must be supplied from available land resources without negative impacts on the food and feed sector [6]. 

The BCI of a biorefinery producing biodiesel from vegetable oil which is fully deployed, with 8 (1/1/3/3) is a benchmark to compare the complexity of other current and future biorefinery systems. 

Lai LX, Bura R.The sulfite mill as a sugar-flexible future biorefinery. Tappi J 2012 11(8) 27—35. 

In the future, biorefineries will process a variety of biomass-based feedstocks in order to produce new base chemicals for the production of many new and already existing bulk chemicals and polymers. White biotechnology will play an important role in this development, as it does already in the production of pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals and speciality chemicals. 

Jacobs PA, Dusselier M, Sels BF. Will zeolite-based catalysis be as relevant in future biorefineries as in crude oil refineries Angew Chem Int Ed 2014 53 8621-6. 

The conventional raw materials used in chemical process are derived predominantly from fossil fuels. Alternate raw materials such as biomass can be employed to promote greener processing. In this direction, the concept of biorefineries is quite relevant [27]. The future biorefineries can employ operations such as extractive distillation with ionic liquids and hyper-branched polymers. 

Kokossis, A.C., Yang, A., 2010. On the use of systems technologies and a systematic approach for the synthesis and the design of future biorefineries. Comput Chem. Eng. 34, 1397-1405. 

Huang, H.-J., Ramaswamy S., Tschirner, U.W., Ramarao, B.V., 2008. A review of separation technologies in current and future biorefineries. Separation and Purification Technology 62 (1), 1-21. 

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