Conversion of Residual Biomass into Valuable Carbon-Based Materials

Dear Colleagues,

The unstoppable rise of urban population and the corresponding increase of waste biomass production, together with more stringent environmental regulations on waste management, pose overwhelming challenges to the world. Indeed, it is of paramount importance to assure access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for all, while limiting or avoiding environmental consequences due to the massive increase of waste produced and its associated risks related to management and disposal. By understanding how residual biomass can be efficiently and safely converted and used as renewable sources of green energy and valuable environmentally friendly materials that can help us battle global warming, we enable the mitigation of our negative impact on the environment. At the same time, we lead the way to widespread access to sustainable energy for all, while increasing the recovery of nutrients to avoid desertification and produce advanced carbon-based materials (i.e., activated bio-carbons) for environmental remediation. In this context, residual biomass represents a source that is relatively free of political control, universally available on an annually renewal basis, and environmentally clean. Exploitation of residual biomass, via innovative thermal, thermochemical, and biological processes, to produce sustainable carbon-based materials such as bio-fuels, advanced carbon materials, fertilizer, and so on, will trigger beneficial actions for the development of a circular economy. The development of affordable, reliable, easily accessible, environmentally clean biomass conversion technologies is still an open concern. This Special Issue aims to bring together all the recent advances in the field, with particular regard to those ensuring, according to the circular economy approach, carbon-neutral biomass conversion technologies.

The focus of this Special Issue is on the biological and thermochemical conversion of biomass for the production of bio-based carbon materials for energy applications (bio-fuels, energy storage materials, electrodic materials) and the production of activated carbons for environmental remediation and recovery of nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen, in particular). The aim of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of the knowledge of the state of the art in this field of residual biomass conversion to produce valuable carbon-based materials.

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Volpe
Prof. Dr. Antonio Messineo
Guest Editors

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