Emerging Sustainable Technologies for Valorization of Waste Materials into Fuels and Chemicals in Biorefinery Concepts: Exergy and Life Cycle Assessments
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Waste and Recycling".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2027 | Viewed by 37
Editors
Interests: sustainability; biorefinery; waste management; exergy analysis; life cycle assessment; biofuels; biochemicals; biocatalysis; process modeling; techno-economic analysis
Interests: life cycle assessments; sustainable food process modeling; environmental nutrition trade-offs; eco-efficiency; circular bioeconomy; digital twins for food and bioprocess systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: data analytics; subsurface storage; optimization; enhanced oil recovery; geomechanics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The fast-growing demand for sustainable energy solutions and the crucial need to decrease global environmental degradation has prompted major efforts to adopt and implement sustainable advanced technologies for transforming all kinds of waste into value-added bioproducts. The incorporation of continuous improvement options in biorefineries via sustainability assessments for near-zero-waste processes offers long term profitability and less reliance on fossil resources, hence facilitating the circular economy. This Special Issue, “Emerging Sustainable Technologies for Valorization of Waste Materials into Fuels and Chemicals in Biorefinery Concepts: Exergy and Life Cycle Assessments”, presents state-of-the-art research integrating novel emerging and sustainable pathways that enhance and recover fuels and chemicals from waste streams in efficient and scalable biorefinery concepts.
A defining feature of this Special Issue is its focus on comprehensive exergy analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies as tools to evaluate and quantify the efficiencies of emerging technologies (e.g., microbial conversion) and resource irreversibilities, as well as the environmental burdens of products' life cycles in biorefineries. Contributions to this Special Issue should examine how these tools would help pinpoint process inefficiencies, enabling more informed decision-making during process design alongside optimization and scale up of emerging technologies, working to bridge the gap between innovation and real-world industrial processes.
Overall, this Special Issue underscores the critical role of waste valorization via sustainable advanced technologies, providing valuable insights for researchers, students, policy-makers, investors, engineers, etc., to facilitate the advancement of knowledge and smooth transition of laboratory-scale innovations to commercial-scale production.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:
- Biorefinery process design and optimization;
- Advanced or emerging conversion technologies of waste materials;
- Exergy analysis of waste valorization processes;
- Integration of renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.) into biorefineries;
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) of waste valorization technologies;
- Socio-political and circular economy analyses;
- Algal refinery, fungal refinery, waste-to-energy technologies;
- Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) feasibilities;
- Environmental impacts of electrocatalytic upgrading and nano-biocatalysis.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Cynthia Ofori-Boateng
Dr. Ebenezer Kwofie
Dr. William Ampomah
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- life cycle assessment
- exergy
- biorefinery
- waste conversion technologies
- biofuels
- circular economy
- sustainability
- waste management
- waste valorization
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