Waste Biorefinery Technologies for Sustainable Energy Processes

A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Biological Processes and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 714

Editors


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Guest Editor
Laboratorio de Evaluación, Desarrollo e Innovación de Tecnología del Agua, CIIDIR-Durango, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Durango 34220, Mexico
Interests: development of wastewater (WW) technology; biological process of WW treatment; biofiltration process; aerobic and anaerobic process; water reuse and management; biomethane and biohydrogen production

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Guest Editor
Departamento de Ciencias del Agua y Medio Ambiente, Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85000, Mexico
Interests: sustainable applied biotechnology; wastewater; wastewater treatment; biological process; residues valorization; anaerobic digestion; co-digestion; micropollutants removal

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of biorefinery refers to carrying out different connected bioprocesses in such a way that the effluent of one bioprocess serves as a substrate for another bioprocess, and in each bioprocess, products of economic interest are obtained, thus minimizing the generation of waste. Solid and liquid wastes with high organic matter content can be managed under biorefinery and circular economy concepts since wastes are revalued to products of economic interest (marketable products). Therefore, an organic waste biorefinery is a facility that integrates organic waste conversion bioprocesses to produce fuels, power, and chemicals. In these processes, the anaerobic fermentations yielding volatile fatty acids (VFA) are a key process as VFA act as intermediates between the organic wastes and the final biorefinery products.

This Special Issue seeks to present the latest technological developments used to generate sustainable energy from wastes, current challenges, and future perspectives. The problems and potential solutions faced by case studies and life cycle assessment studies are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Marco Antonio Garzón-Zúñiga
Prof. Dr. Denisse Serrano-Palacios
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • circular economy
  • waste (water) to byproducts
  • lignocellulosic compounds breakdown
  • anaerobic digestion in two steps
  • dark fermentation
  • anaerobic digestion
  • biogas
  • VFA
  • volatile fatty acids
  • bioenergy
  • biohydrogen
  • biomethane
  • biohythane
  • bioethanol
  • biodiesel
  • biomass pretreatment
  • biomass conversion
  • biopolymers
  • polyhydroxyalkanoates
  • ethanol
  • microalgae production
  • microalgae production from wastewater
  • life cycle assessment
  • urban organic waste
  • organic waste (liquid and solid)
  • organic waste fermentation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

19 pages, 2919 KB  
Article
Methane Production Using Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Swine and Nejayote Wastewater: Synergic Effects and Kinetic Modeling Studies
by Perla A. González-Tineo, Juan F. Maldonado-Escalante, Eduardo Castro-Payán, Edna R. Meza-Escalante, Luis H. Álvarez, Rigoberto Plascencia-Jatomea and Denisse Serrano-Palacios
Processes 2026, 14(10), 1649; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr14101649 - 20 May 2026
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Abstract
Anaerobic co-digestion of substrates offers synergistic benefits, enhancing methane production and improving the operational stability of wastewater treatment. The present study, for the first time, evaluated the biochemical methane potential and kinetics modeling performance of two regional wastewater streams—swine wastewater (SW) and nejayote [...] Read more.
Anaerobic co-digestion of substrates offers synergistic benefits, enhancing methane production and improving the operational stability of wastewater treatment. The present study, for the first time, evaluated the biochemical methane potential and kinetics modeling performance of two regional wastewater streams—swine wastewater (SW) and nejayote wastewater (NW)—under mesophilic batch conditions. Five substrate ratios (SW/NW: 100/0 to 0/100) were tested, and interaction effects were measured using the co-digestion performance index (CPI). All mixtures demonstrated synergistic effects, with CPI values ranging from 1.12 to 1.26. NW exhibited the highest methane yield (438 ± 25 NL-CH4/kgCODT-removed), nearly twice that obtained for SW (227 ± 18 NL-CH4/kgCODT-removed). In addition, co-digestion improved the methane yield of SW as mono-digestion, with production increasing from 281.8 ± 12.4 to 304.7 ± 27.8 NL-CH4/kgCODT-removed in all mixtures. The methane production kinetics were analyzed using six mathematical models. The multi-phase Gompertz model provided the best fit (R2 > 0.99), while the two-phase model offered the best balance of accuracy and simplicity according to Akaike’s criterion. The present model effectively described the diauxic patterns of methane production resulting from substrate heterogeneity with an error of <8% for all experimental assays. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Waste Biorefinery Technologies for Sustainable Energy Processes)
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