Guest editorial: Biomass conversion for energy: Process intensification and economics

Abstract

The symposium Biomass Conversion for Energy: Process Intensification and Economics held at the Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference 2022 corresponds to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): SDG7—produce more affordable and cleaner energy; SDG9—build small-scale industrial enterprises and domestic technologies; SDG12—improve the management and efficient use of natural resources; SDG13—integrate climate change measures into national strategies. Cooking fuel remains scarce in many regions around the world as three billion people rely on polluting systems while 800 million people have no electricity. The energy density of renewable resources is low, compared to petroleum, which makes transporting bio-feedstocks to centralized stations prohibitively expensive. Process intensification (PI) and distributed manufacturing are strategies that reduce costs and serve these markets equitably. PI reduces the size of equipment while maintaining productivity by maximizing thermal, electrical, mechanical, and catalytic driving forces. These technologies must be coupled with mass manufacturing (numbering up manufacturing rather than scaling up) to achieve economic parity with centralized power facilities. They apply to converting biomass to electricity, thermo-processing of lignocellulosics, and producing liquid fuels, butane, and propane from flared and vented natural gas, landfill gas, and biogas, via gas-to-liquids technology.