Waste biomass application

Waste-heat and other special-purpose boilers Special designs provide boilers for waste heat and chemical recovery, waste-to-energy, and combined-cycle installations, pulverized-bed, and even biomass applications. 

Additionally, the environmental issue of utilizing waste cellulosic material and waste biomass products should be considered as an alternative green chemistry application to the production of many value added products. The combinatorial utilization of carbohydrate scaffolds based on chiral building block functionalization will also constitute attractive and relatively cheap starting materials. This rich selection of potential approaches, combined with further developments of new procedures and modem reagents, creates an enormous opportunity for the field to be at the frontier for many years to come. 

Until fairly recently, no significant publications were produced on rapid or flash pyrolysis of waste plastics harnessing a FFR. A review of FFR developments is therefore given below regarding coal or biomass applications. 

If the particle size of the biomass fuel or feedstock is not predetermined by its history, as is the case for sawdusts, nutshells, and a few other waste biomass materials, size reduction is usually carried out with one or more units that make up the front end of the total processing system. Many different kinds of machines are employed. Generally, the size of the feed is reduced by grinding, cutting, or impact mechanisms. Not all of the designs are suitable for biomass energy applications because the equipment is customized for certain uses or the cost of size reduction is excessive. Agricultural crops and woody biomass are also usually processed by different types of machines. A brief review of the basic types of machines that are or have been used for biomass follows to illustrate the variety of size-reduction equipment and their biomass applications. 

Lin Z, Wu J, Xue R, Yang Y (2005) Spectroscopic characterization of Au " biosorption by waste biomass of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Spectrochim Acta Part A 61 761—765 Lin M-F, Thakur VK, Tan EJ, Lee PS (2011a) Dopant induced hollow BaTi03 nanostructures for application in high performance capacitors. J Mater Chem 21 16500-16504 Lin M-F, Thakur VK, Tan EJ, Lee PS (2011b) Surface functionalization of BaTi03 nanoparticles and improved electrical properties of BaTi03/polyvinylidene fluoride composite. RSC Adv 1 576-578... 

Another company. Paradigm Biomedical (http //www.paradigmbiomedical.com/), uses rhamnolipids in the treatment of psoriasis, in wound-healing applications. The low toxicity, biocompatibility and biodegradability of rhamnolipids is also the reason that a cosme-ceutical company, Aurora Advanced Beauty Labs (http //www.aurorabeautylabs.com/), includes rhamnolipids in their cosmetic formulations. In the case of medical and cosmetic applications, both companies indicate that they use only highly purified forms of the biosurfactant, which suggests that biosurfactants produced from waste biomass are not suitable for these applications. 

It is important to recall that the research into bio-based surfactants extracted by chemical methods from waste biomass is still in its early days. As such, the production technology that will be described in the next section is still quite close to laboratory protocols and not industrial processes. As will be described in more detail, the quality of these surfactants is inferior to the quality of the biosurfactants produced (higher CMC, higher surface tension after CMC). However, the potential for high throughput, abundance of the biomass and the current economics of wastewater biosolid handling make this an interesting alternative for some applications that will be described later in this chapter. 

Some time ago an Australian company, Circa (http //circagroup.com.au/), entered the market of converting waste biomass into advanced biochemical materials. One of the products of their interest is levoglucosenone. Since then, they have developed and promoted development of various products deriving from this green compound. Recently, their CEO, Tony Duncan, presented recent accomplishments of the company and their collaborators in finding novel applications of levoglucosenone [11]. They include such diverse compounds as polar aprotic solvent, cyrene, 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furfural, and 1,6-hexanediol. Interested readers should check Tony Duncan s presentation. 

These applications avoid the major obstacles for using biomass for electricity generation fluctuation in the supply, and the type of biomass available. Seasonal variations and differing quality of feedstock are the biggest barriers to more widespread use. This is especially true for biomass wastes. 

Should biomass be included as a green energy, given that it has direct air emissions and may not be renewable in its most common application— waste burning ... 

In a separate study, Igwe and Abia46 determined the equilibrium adsorption isotherms of Cd(II), Pb(II), and Zn(II) ions and detoxification of wastewater using unmodified and ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA)-modified maize husks as a biosorbent. This study established that maize husks are excellent adsorbents for the removal of these metal ions, with the amount of metal ions adsorbed increasing as the initial concentrations increased. The study further established that EDTA modification of maize husks enhances the adsorption capacity of maize husks, which is attributed to the chelating ability of EDTA. Therefore, this study demonstrates that maize husks, which are generally considered as biomass waste, may be used as adsorbents for heavy metal removal from wastewater streams from various industries and would therefore find application in various parts of the world where development is closely tied to affordable cost as well as environmental cleanliness.46... 

The Marine Biotechnology Institute (MBI) was founded in 1987 for the study and applications of biodiversity in marine environments. Currently, and within the scope of the present book, the research area of relevance is industrial applications of microbiology . The institute also performs research in C02 fixation. The Applied Microbiology Laboratory is searching cost-effective utilization of microbes for environmental conservation and restoration. In particular, the decontamination of areas polluted with petroleum-related compounds has been addressed. Attention has been paid to removal of polycyclic hydrocarbons. They are also developing processing methods for the conversion of biomass and organic wastes by methane fermentation. 

The BioTherm process of the company Dynamotive (Vancouver, Canada). The process is based on a stationary FB and the largest plant processes about 100 t/day of biomass. This unit is situated in Ontario (Canada) and its feedstock is woody waste. In this application, the obtained bio-oil is converted into electricity using an Orenda gas turbine (2.5 MWe). 

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