Biomass Transformation: Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

The exploitation of biomass resources represents an urgent need to produce energy, fuels, and chemical products, to replace the traditional ones, still limitedly obtained from fossil sources. Different valorization strategies are available, grouped as “thermochemical treatments”, including the wet-based ones (e.g., carried out in water and/or in organic solvents, aimed by chemical and/or biochemical catalysis), and the dry-based thermal ones (e.g., pyrolysis and gasification). The available literature on these processes is notoriously extensive, but continuous research is still necessary to improve their efficiency and promote their full development on the industrial scale, really developing the criteria of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Some questions are not yet answered with certainty and require further investigation. For example, is it possible to develop robust processes, efficiently exploiting waste biomasses, at the same time respecting the environment? Moreover, some hidden technological bottlenecks are still unsolved (e.g., scaling-up of the reactors and work-up units): How is it possible to overcome them? Is it possible to improve the synthesis of catalysts that are active and selective towards the target compound(s), meeting the criteria of low-cost and environmental protection? The proposed topic is wide and challenging, ranging from the development of catalysts to the process intensification, including integrated evaluations via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Water is the ideal candidate to meet the sustainability criteria, but also new green bio-based solvents could be attractive to perform biomass transformations (e.g., hydrolysis/dehydration, hydrogenation, oxidation, esterification, ecc.), e.g., working under monophasic or biphasic conditions. To include all these aspects, direct conversion strategies of biomasses will be appreciated, as well as the further upgrade of biomass-derived platform chemicals into more added-value bio-products, even considering the dry-based thermal processes (such as the conversion of biomass to liquid (BTL) transportation fuels via Fischer-Tropsch reaction). Authors are welcome to submit their valuable contributions, demonstrating concrete progress over the current state of the art.

Dr. Domenico Licursi
Prof. Dr. Juan J. Hernández
Topic Editors