Emerging Biofuels: Stationary and Mobile Applications

Emerging Biofuels: Stationary and Mobile Applications presents a comprehensive assessment of supply chains and conversion pathways of the promising biofuels in the 21st century. Highlighting the potential of emerging biofuels, the book covers the latest breakthroughs and process intensification strategies for the development of near to mid-term commercialization. Chapters provide readers with an overview of emerging biofuels, key advantages, and major drivers for the biofuel industry. The majority of the book is dedicated to assessing each emerging biofuel, including renewable diesel, bio-CNG, 3rd generation lignocellulosic ethanol, fisher-tropsch biofuels, biohydrogen, microalgal biodiesel, bio jet fuel, hythane, methanol, and bio-oil, dimethyl ether, and more.

The final chapters of the book examine techno-economic viability, sustainability, and the lifecycle of selected biofuel through detailed case studies while also analyzing international policy frameworks for biofuels. This book is a valuable reference for students, researchers and industry engineers involved in biofuels production, but will also be of interest to multidisciplinary teams working across Renewable Energy, Chemical Engineering, Environmental Science and Sustainability Science.

• Brings together the fundamentals and latest developments on emerging biofuels
• Provides a comparative assessment of biofuels and alternative conversion pathways
• Offers a holistic assessment of biomass supply chains for guided sustainability analysis and informed decision-making

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Mar 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9780323995597

Book preview

Preface

Sonil Nanda, Ajay K. Dalai and Vaibhav Vasant Goud

Transitioning towards biofuels and bio-based materials is the key to meeting the challenges of clean energy security, waste management, and environmental sustainability. Fossil fuels have dominated the energy market, power sectors, and chemical industries since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It is also well known that the exploitation of fossil fuels has largely contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and global warming. Fossil fuel industries have also created a threat and massive competition to alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, and biomass. This is largely because the power and energy infrastructures rely on a usable form factor of energy, that is, in the form of solid, liquid, and gas. In this context, waste biomass can supplement biofuels in these adoptable forms to quench the ever-increasing energy demands of the growing population and industrial development at a global scale. Research and innovation on biofuels also satisfy many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Although biofuels are carbon-neutral and can be produced from low-cost biomass, their commercialization is challenged by the processing complexities of its raw materials such as agricultural crop residues, woody biomass, municipal solid waste, microalgae, and other heterogeneous organic waste matter. This book sheds light on understanding these complexities in addition to the thermochemical, biological, hydrothermal, and mechanical conversion technologies to produce emerging biofuels from a wide range of biomass feedstocks. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of these technologies are emphasized along with the life cycle and techno-economic assessments for biorefinery process scale-up and biofuel commercialization.

Chapter 1 by Jha et al. reports the various factors crucial for the commercialization of biofuels such as research innovation, technology adoption, net energy gain, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. Chapter 2 by Routray et al. presents a focused overview of anaerobic digestion from a well-established technology to becoming an integrated process along with other thermochemical and biological biomass conversion technologies in a circular economy perspective. Chapter 3 by Anand et al. provides a comprehensive description of the dark fermentation of organic wastes for biohydrogen production in addition to a critical review of its process parameters. Chapter 4 by Verma et al. emphasizes the research advancements in microbial bioethanol and biobutanol production technologies along with their advantages and disadvantages as biofuels and biochemicals. Chapter 5 by Dwivedi et al. describes the different benefits of microwave-assisted pyrolysis technology over conventional pyrolysis in terms of thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, conversion efficiency, and biofuel product quality. Chapter 6 by Kalagnanam et al. explores hydrothermal liquefaction as a potential method to transform wood bark into biofuels, including discussions on feedstock pretreatment, bio-crude production, and upgrading into transportation fuels. Chapter 7 by Chaudhary et al. describes bio-crude production from agro-forestry biomass via hydrothermal liquefaction and different upgradation technologies with the main emphasis on hydrodeoxygenation, catalytic cracking and blending to produce deoxygenated renewable fuels. Chapter 8 by Baig and Sonal sheds light on Fischer–Tropsch synthesis as an efficient technology for catalytic conversion of syngas into green hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals along with a thorough discussion of the effects of syngas composition and its impurities on conversion efficiency. Chapter 9 by Sarker et al. reviews the current state of microwave torrefaction for transforming low-grade biomass into high-value torrefied products along with elaborations on the microwave heating mechanism and the impacts of various process parameters on the quality and end-use of the products. Chapter 10 by Gautam and Acharya explores some recent advances and commercialization potentials for hydrothermal carbonization technology to process biomass with high moisture content and produce hydrochar with a wide variety of applications.

We are grateful to all the authors for contributing their high-quality chapters to develop this book. We also express our sincere thanks to the staff and associates at Elsevier, especially Dr. Rupinder Heron (Editorial Project Manager), Ms. Anitha Sivaraj (Production Project Manager) and Dr. Peter W. Adamson (Acquisitions Editor for Renewable Energy) for their enthusiastic assistance and insights in the preparation of this book.

Chapter 1

Perspectives on the sustainability and commercialization of biofuels

Shivangi Jha¹, Sonil Nanda², Bishnu Acharya¹ and Ajay K. Dalai¹,    ¹Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada,    ²Department of Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, Truro, NS, Canada

Abstract

In the past few decades, unprecedented efforts have been undertaken to reduce reliance on fossil fuels to minimize air pollution and mitigate the effects of climate change. Energy sector fossil fuel combustion is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and climate change. These possibilities have inspired scientists and policymakers to seek out environmentally friendly energy supply choices with improved energy efficiency. Globally, biofuels, which are viewed as an alternative to fossil fuels, have become a top priority due to their eco-friendliness. Numerous energy policy measures have been implemented, particularly in biofuel production and consumption, and numerous technological advancements are in progress. Alternative fuels can be used to effectively combat the crisis of fossil fuels. However, the viability of biofuels derived from biomass is contingent on numerous criteria, including net energy gain, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and environmental impact. In this chapter, the various factors are crucial for the commercialization of biofuels such as research innovation, technology adoption, net energy gain, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. Besides, important insights from case studies about biofuel adoption criteria are also discussed.

Keywords

Biofuels; sustainability; commercialization; technology adoption; policies

1.1 Introduction

A large amount of biomass including agricultural residues is underutilized for its potential to contribute to energy generation. One such underused biomass is agricultural residues. It is required to put them into use to solve the issue of disposal in addition to utilizing the potential and it holds to solve environmental problems. Biomass is a sustainable form of clean and renewable carbon. Sustainability science is one such field that has received contributions from various disciplines such as ecological management, environmental studies, econometrics, and various other fields that are connected to the environment, humans, and social systems. Sustainable development has various research characteristics that can be very closely related to addressing poverty, hunger, education, good health, sanitation, economic growth, ecosystem, global peace, partnership, and reducing inequalities (Nanda et al., 2015).

Biomass also covers all the aspects of different elements of sustainability. Besides, biomass is carbon neutral, and comparatively environmentally friendly and hence assists the well-being of humans by limiting the release of particulates into the air, leading to better air quality and far less pollution (Okolie et al., 2021a). The viability of biofuels obtained from biomass depends on a lot of factors such as net energy gain, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and the effects on the environment (Pattnaik et al., 2022).

Several countries are switching to alternate sources of energy to meet their energy targets. The objective of decreasing carbon emissions can be met by the growing use of low-carbon biofuels. However, unpredictable market conditions and uncertainty of policies cause impediments to the advanced biofuels implementation (White et al., 2013). Government plays a significant role in the development of technology. Initiatives taken by the government to encourage knowledge mobilization to develop new technology are very crucial. It is relevant to align academic research, public involvement, and government policies for the deployment of technology.

The usage of modern technologies to produce biofuels is growing. However, technology adoption by companies is conducive to the commercialization of technology. Several factors decide whether a technology will be implemented by the industry. Understanding the economics of the biofuel industry is critical to its commercialization. A technology is termed successful when it provides considerable environmental, social, employment, and financial gains (Nanda et al., 2022).

Many aspects are responsible for this such as policies, geopolitical unpredictability, and climate change. Industrial decision-making involves a multicriterion approach which is particularly beneficial for application-based innovation in the high-expertise market sector. The criteria depend on the technology or situation that must be evaluated. Generally, the criteria considered by manufacturing industries are production cost, dependability, durability, recyclability, and market trends (Prasanth et al., 2021). These characteristics are approached tactically by industries via constant enhancement.

With rapid industrialization and the need for financial stability being the chief targets, various secondary issues have come into the limelight such as contamination of heavy metals in industrial wastewater that needs treatment. Industrial wastewater pollutes marine and land ecosystems with toxic heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, chromium, copper, zinc, nickel, and mercury. These metals are found to be bio-accumulative and so their solubility is very high in aquatic environments (Patra et al., 2021). Some of the pollutants present in industrial wastewater as listed in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1

If these contaminants are directly released into the water sources without proper treatment, they can cause very severe water pollution which is a potential threat to human, animal, and aquatic life. Certain standards are determined for the number of pollutants present in the wastewater. Therefore industrial wastewater needs to be treated before disposal. Hence, it is crucial to establish the field of research by maintaining the standards of wastewater to meet local environmental standards.

One of the widely used techniques for wastewater purification is adsorption which removes organic and inorganic compounds at an industrial scale. Owing to their porosity, well-developed internal surface area, and high adsorption capacity, solid carbon, or biochar is considered the most suited activated carbon among other adsorbents (Nanda et al., 2016; Masoumi et al., 2021; Kang et al., 2022). Moreover, biochar is an effective, inexpensive, and eco-friendly adsorbent that is associated with its large surface area and abundant surface functional groups (Singh et al., 2021). Biochar can treat heavy metals in wastewater owing to the occurrence of structures that are very porous along with various functional groups.

1.2 Criteria for the adoption of biofuels

Biofuel adoption criteria can be analyzed by various correlative studies. The various methods of analyzing corelative research are meta-analysis and mixed. The qualitative meta-analysis is an effort to conduct a demanding subordinate qualitative investigation of main qualitative findings and delivers a more all-inclusive account of a phenomenon and a valuation of the effect of the method of inquiry on results. Meta-analysis of the effect of biofuel production on economic development has been performed by various researchers. Whereas the mixed method discusses a budding methodology of research that develops the systematic combination of quantitative and qualitative information within a single inquiry or continued program of inquiry (Wisdom and Creswell, 2013). Area-wise case studies of the feasibility of biofuel production are common too. Case studies are an approach of examination during which the researcher discovers the profundity of an activity. Case studies are usually defined by the time and activity and the researchers gather comprehensive data collected over a period (Rodriguez et al., 2019). Some of these significant case studies are highlighted in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2