Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
E
NERGY AND
M
ATERIAL
R
ECOVERY FROM
B
IOMASS
:
T
HE
B
IOREFINERY
A
PPROACH
.
C
ONCEPT
O
VERVIEW AND
E
NVIRONMENTAL
E
VA L U AT I O N
Francesco Cherubini
∗
and Gerfried Jungmeier
Joanneum Research, Institute of Energy Research, Elisabethstraße 5, 8010 Graz, Austria
A
BSTRACT
A great fraction of worldwide energy carriers and material products come from fossil
fuel refinery. Because of the on-going price increase of fossil resources, the uncertain
availability, the environmental concerns and the fact that they are not a renewable
resource, the feasibility of their exploitation is predicted to decrease in the near future.
Therefore, alternative solutions able to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels should be
promoted. Electricity and heat can be provided by a variety of renewable alternatives
(wind, sun, water, biomass), while the fossil resource alternative for production of fuels
and chemicals can be just biomass, the only C-rich material source available on the Earth,
besides fossils.
The replacement of oil with biomass as raw material for fuel and chemical
production leads to the development of “biorefinery”, a relatively young concept in the
scientific literature. In biorefinery, almost all the types of biomass feedstock can be
converted to different classes of biofuels and chemicals through jointly applied
conversion technologies. This chapter describes the emerging biorefinery concept and
provides an overview of the most important biomass sources, conversion technologies
and platforms (or intermediates). The advantages of biorefinery systems over
conventional fossil systems are outlined by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): in
the second half of this chapter, a LCA of a biorefinery system based on a lignocellulosic
feedstock (e.g. wood industrial residues) and producing bioethanol and
methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF) as transportation biofuels, furan resins, fumaric acid and
oxygen as chemicals and hydrogen, biomethane, electricity and heat as further energy
carriers, is reported. The biorefinery system is compared with a reference system based
on fossil sources. Results focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy balances and
estimate the possible GHG and fossil energy savings. System performances are also
