Environmental problems are forcing a rethinking of the world’s energy supply system. In parallel, there is an increasing amount of global solid waste production. A fundamental shift toward greater reliance on biomass wastes in the world’s energy system is plausible because of ongoing major technological advances that hold the promise of making the conversion of biomass into high-quality energy carriers, like electricity and gaseous or liquid fuels, economically competitive with fossil fuels. Therefore, waste-to-energy systems have become a paramount topic for both industry and researchers due to interest in energy production from waste and improved chemical and thermal efficiencies with more cost-effective designs. This biomass shift is also important for industries to become more efficient by using their own wastes to produce their own energy in the light of the circular economy concept. This book on “Biomass Wastes for Energy Production” brings novel advances on waste-to-energy technologies, life cycle assessment, and computational models, and contributes to promoting rethinking of the world’s energy supply systems.

Biomass can be converted to energy, biofuels, and bioproducts via thermochemical conversion processes, such as combustion, pyrolysis, and gasification. Combustion technology is most widely applied on an industrial scale. However, biomass gasification and pyrolysis processes are still in the research and development stage. The major products from these processes are syngas, bio-oil, and char (called also biochar for agronomic application). Among these products, biomass chars have received increasing attention for different applications, such as gasification, co-combustion, catalysts or adsorbents precursors, soil amendment, carbon fuel cells, and supercapacitors. This Special Issue provides an overview of biomass char production methods (pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, etc.), characterization techniques (e.g., scanning electronic microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, nitrogen adsorption, Raman spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and temperature programmed desorption and mass spectrometry), their properties, and their suitable recovery processes.

This book covers latest information on organic and inorganic waste management, and how the waste can be utilized as an energy source. An increasing world population and climate change rate hint that environmental health needs a sustainable waste recycling system worldwide. Management of wastes material plays a substantial role in the environment and climate regulation. Chapters contain modern tools and techniques for managing inorganic, biomedical, municipality, and food waste. The title covers the role of contemporary microbiology and biotechnological tools in waste management and how these microbial agents can enhance waste degradation and bioenergy production. The book covers interesting topics such as bio-ethanol production from agro-waste, microbial fuel cells, biogas production from animal waste, nanotechnology in waste recycling, etc. The primary audiences are researchers, scientists, students, and policymakers interlinked with waste management and applied microbial sectors. ​

This edited book focuses on agricultural and food waste biomass valorization in various fields such as energy and environment and the development of several other value-added products. The chapters in this book cover different areas like sources of agricultural and food wastes, recent trends on waste utilization, innovations and sustainability of techniques, and challenges associated with valorization of wastes. In the last few decades, scientists and researchers of different countries predicted that waste material generated due to global problems can be used as a potential feeding material for the manufacturing of different valuable products. Hence, there is a need for more research and development of several other value-added products from waste materials. Proper utilization of these waste materials has been discussed in this book. It also covers the bioactive recovery from food waste, health benefits of extracted bioactive, and utilization of valorized products. The book also explores future technological challenges and sustainability issues. This title is a great resource for environmental and chemical engineers, food scientists, food researchers and technologists, as well as for students and professionals working in this field.

Written and edited by a team of industry experts, this exciting new volume covers clean energy production from sewage and biomass while achieving a zero-waste strategy. Wastewater treatment plants are critical in protecting both the environment’s resources and human health. A wastewater treatment plant’s technological system focuses not only on the effectiveness of the treatment but on the costs and energy consumption of the entire system. Municipal wastewater treatment produces a significant amount of sewage sludge all over the world. The majority of this sludge’s dry matter content is made up of organic compounds which are not toxic, and they consist of both primary and secondary (microbiological) sludge. There is also a substantial quantity of inorganic substances in the sludge, along with a small quantity of toxic matter. Also, various raw sewage treatment options can include energy production (heat, electricity, or biofuel) to reduce dependence on external energy supply during treatment. The most important options used for energy production from sewage and biomass can use the following approaches: anaerobic digestion, co-digestion, incineration with energy recovery, co-incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, supercritical (wet) oxidation, and hydrolysis. Generally, these processes or methods are cost-effective, but they can still have some setbacks related to the nature of the methods or the raw material used for conversion. There are also operating conditions to comply with to get a successful outcome. This book combines information from many disciplines related to wastewater treatment technologies to show how the circular economy approach can be used to achieve zero waste and produce energy that can be useful for plants and communities. This approach focuses on clean technologies for green energy resources such as biohydrogen, biofuels, and biogas from biomass and sewage sludge for zero waste production. This is aimed to also integrate the issue of energy demand and the one of energy production.

Biotechnological Applications of Biomass provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art of biomass utilization in agriculture and pharmaceuticals. The information contained herein is useful to researchers and other readers interested in biomass utilization and production of bioproducts.

Agro-industrial wastes are end-products emerging after industrial processing operations and also from their treatment and disposal e.g. solid fruit wastes and sludge. The agro-industrial wastes are often present in multiphase and comprise multicomponent. Nevertheless, these wastes are a goldmine as they possess valuable organic matter which can be diverted towards high value products ranging from polymers to antibiotics to platform chemicals. There have been plenty of books published on bioenergy, enzymes and organic acids, among others. However, this emerging field of biochemical has not yet been covered so far which is an important entity of the biorefinery model from waste biomass and needs to be understood from fundamental, applied as well as commercial perspective which has been laid out in this book.

Biomass, Biofuels, Biochemicals: Circular Bioeconomy: Technologies for Biofuels and Biochemicals provides comprehensive information on strategies and approaches that facilitate the integration of technologies for the production of bio-based fuels, chemicals and other value-added products from wastes with waste biorefinery concepts and green strategies. The book also covers lifecycle assessment and techno-economic analyses of integrated biorefineries within a circular bioeconomy framework. As there has been continual research on new designs in production and consumerist approaches as we move towards sustainable development by scientists of various disciplines, law makers, environmental activists and industrialists, this book provides the latest details. Resources consumption and environment degradation necessitates a transition of our linear economy towards sustainable social and technical systems. As fossil resources are only projected to fulfill the needs of the population for the next couple of centuries, new tactics and standards must be created to ensure future success. - Covers recent developments and perspectives on biofuels and chemicals production - Provides the latest on the integration of technologies and processes for biofuels and chemicals production - Paves a way forward roadmap to achieve Sustainable Development Goals - Covers recent developments in lifecycle assessment and techno economic analysis using a waste biorefinery approach