Biomass as a Renewable Power Source

Dear Colleagues,

Biofuels and biochemicals are a renewable and clean power resource.  With the problems of depletion of fossil resources as well as the adverse effects of the indiscriminate use of  fossil resources, there has been currently a paradigm shift to biofuels production. However, much of the research on this topic is far from the practical realization of industrial scale production  at the biorefinery facility.  The objective of the Special Issue on "Biomass as a Renewable Power Source" is to accelerate the research and development so that know-how is provided for the upcoming biorefinery installations.  Such facilities have potential for alleviating the problems of energy shortages, catastrophic effects of climate change, growing joblessness among skilled youth, and economic inflation.  Biomass is an abundant organic renewable feedstock that could be converted to biofuels such as biodiesel, bioethanol, glucose, biohydrogen, biomethane, biokerosene, jet fuel range hydrocarbons, bioelectricity and many other advanced biofuels by innovative catalytic processes, namely, transesterification, hydrolysis, dehydration,  isomerization, alkylation, hydrogenation, oxidation and many others.  A web of Science search with the keyword "biofuels" provides a total of 113,378 results (as on 2^nd March 2021) in total. Growing interest in this field of research is clear from increase in number of publications on this topic during the last decade as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A plot of number of publication Vs year of publication from the web of science with the search keyword “Biofuels”.

Owing to the potential of biomass to solve the diverse problems mankind is currently facing, it is intended to bring out this Special Issue on “Biomass as a Renewable Power Source”, which will serve as a resource material for academics for initiating semester courses in academic institutes to educate young students and researchers on this subject and also serve as guidance for policymakers as well as industrial investors for building the necessary infrastructure for biorefinery facilities to produce biomass-based power sources.  The research community in this field is strongly encouraged to submit their research results for publication in this Special Issue of the journal Sustainability.

Scope:

1. Biomass conversion processes;
2. The transesterification of micro- and macroalgal biomass to biodiesel;
3. The conversion of lignocellulosic and algal biomass to bioethanol;
4. The conversion of biomass to biochemicals;
5. Direct bioethanol alkaline fuel cells;
6. The fermentation of carbohydrates to biofuels and biochemicals;
7. The photofermentation of glucose to biohydrogen.

Dr. Indra Neel Pulidindi
Guest Editor

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