Publications related to Second-generation biofuels

Development of Sustainable Carbohydrate-Based Solvents by Acetal Functionalisation of Biomass

Organic solvents are ubiquitous in industrial and domestic applications from the production of pharmaceuticals to household consumer products. The negative impact of most traditional solvents, especially aprotic types, on the environment, health, and safet ...

EPFL2024

Biodiesel from Bark and Black Liquor-A Techno-Economic, Social, and Environmental Assessment

Julia Granacher

A techno-economic assessment and environmental and social sustainability assessments of novel Fischer-Tropsch (FT) biodiesel production from the wet and dry gasification of biomass-based residue streams (bark and black liquor from pulp production) for tran ...

MDPI2024

Design and Synthesis of Bio-based Amphiphiles from Lignocellulosic Biomass

Songlan Sun

In the pursuit of a carbon-neutral chemical industry, minimizing fossil feedstock consumption while integrating renewable carbon sources is imperative. Surfactants, inherently amphiphilic, pose challenges in separation and recovery processes. Given their e ...

EPFL2024

Investigation of Biomass Hydrothermal Conversion Products by HRMS

Daniil Salionov

The dependency on fossil fuels and their impact on the environment is a matter of great concern for the future sustainability of modern society. The development of the "green" technologies which utilize renewable energy sources is now under investigation. ...

EPFL2023

Leveraging industrial biorefineries for the energy transition

François Maréchal, Julia Granacher

Biorefineries hold the potential to provide products and energy carriers at reduced environmental impact compared to their fossil-based counterparts. Thus, they can contribute to the decarbonization of sectors in which electrification of demands is challen ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2023

Integrated production of urea and nitric acid in the pulp industry: techno-economic and environmental analysis of black liquor gasification-based processes

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Shivom Sharma, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

The pursuit of alternative energy sources for the nitrogen fertilizers sector has recently earned renewed interest due to increasing concerns regarding the world dependence on non-renewable energy resources and also motivated by the more stringent environm ...

2022

Biomass to energy: a machine learning model for optimum gasification pathways

Berend Smit, Kevin Maik Jablonka, Susana Garcia Lopez

Biomass is a highly versatile renewable resource for decarbonizing energy systems. Gasification is a promising conversion technology that can transform biomass into multiple energy carriers to produce heat, electricity, biofuels, or chemicals. At present, ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2023

Direct conversion of lignin to functionalized diaryl ethers via oxidative cross-coupling

Paul Joseph Dyson, Mingyang Liu

Efficient valorization of lignin, a sustainable source of functionalized aromatic products, would reduce dependence on fossil-derived feedstocks. Oxidative depolymerization is frequently applied to lignin to generate phenolic mono- mers. However, due to th ...

Nature Research2023

Process modeling and integration of hydrogen and synthetic natural gas production in a kraft pulp mill via black liquor gasification

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

The black liquor gasification integrated to chemical plants has shown potential for reducing the process irreversibility and promoting the decarbonization of this industrial sector. In the integrated chemical plants proposed in this work, the purpose is co ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Ni-Based Nanoparticles Catalyzed Hydrodeoxygenation of Ketones, Ethers, and Phenols to (Cyclo) Aliphatic Compounds

Paul Joseph Dyson, Mingyang Liu, Xiang Li, Yelin Hu, Matthias Beller

Catalytic hydrodeoxygenation is of prime importance in the valorization of biomass-based feedstocks to produce essential chemicals and fuels. To carry out this process in a more cost-effective and sustainable manner, the use of 3D-metal-based nanostructure ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Sustainable polyesters via direct functionalization of lignocellulosic sugars

François Maréchal, Harm-Anton Klok, Véronique Michaud, Jeremy Luterbacher, Yves Leterrier, Maxime Alexandre Clément Hedou, Adrien Julien Demongeot, Graham Reid Dick, Christèle Rayroud, Thibault Rambert

The development of sustainable plastics from abundant renewable feedstocks has been limited by the complexity and efficiency of their production, as well as their lack of competitive material properties. Here we demonstrate the direct transformation of the ...

2022

Model-based scale-up of a continuously operated consolidated bioprocess based on a microbial consortium for the production of ethanol

David Beat Dempfle

This work demonstrated that consolidated bioprocessing is a promising concept for conversion of lignocellulose to ethanol at industrial scale. CBP offers great cost saving potential, is feasible to be operated continuously and may be scaled up due to exten ...

EPFL2022

Developing structure-oriented models for enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass

Jessica Charlène Rohrbach

With the unsustainable use of fossil fuels increasing strains on human institutions and ecosystems, the development of a renewable energy alternative is of paramount importance. Second generation biorefineries, based on the production of fuels and chemical ...

EPFL2021

Toward waste valorization by converting bioethanol production residues into nanoparticles and nanocomposite films

Xun Liao, Muhammad Farooq

A "waste-valorization" approach was developed to transform recalcitrant hydrolysis lignin (HL) from secondgeneration bioethanol production into multifunctional bio-based products. The hydrolysis lignin (HL) was extracted with aqueous acetone, yielding two ...

ELSEVIER2021

Propelling the hydrogen economy: from chemical storage and delivery to utilization in biomass conversion

Lu Chen

Since H2 is a non-polluting, inexhaustible, efficient, and sustainable energy carrier, it has been forecast to become one of the major carriers of energy in the future and is also essential in the production of feedstock chemicals derived from renewable ca ...

EPFL2021

Exergy assessment and techno-economic optimization of bioethanol production routes

François Maréchal

Currently, electricity generation and second-generation ethanol production from lignocellulosic feedstocks represent technological alternatives in the bioenergy sector. Nevertheless, the introduction of new production processes denotes a real challenge due ...

2020

Using agricultural residues for sustainable transportation biofuels in 2050: Case of West Africa

Edgard Gnansounou, Elia Mercedes Ruiz Pachon

This article focuses on the use of biomass to produce transportation fuels such as synthetic natural gas, bioethanol and electricity under a sustainable scenario in West Africa in 2050. The aim of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of producing such ...

Elsevier2020

Aldehyde-Assisted Lignocellulose Fractionation Provides Unique Lignin Oligomers for the Design of Tunable Polyurethane Bioresins

Jeremy Luterbacher, Jean Thierry C Behaghel de Bueren, Florent Emmanuel Héroguel, Raymond Gérard Buser, Chloé Wegmann

Thanks to chemical stabilization, aldehyde-assisted fractionation (AAF) of lignocellulosic biomass has recently emerged as a powerful tool for the production of largely uncondensed lignin. Depolymerization of AAF lignin via ether deavage provides aromatic ...

American Chemical Society2020

Lignin Functionalization for the Production of Novel Materials

Jeremy Luterbacher, Stefania Bertella

Lignin, a major constituent of lignocellulosic biomass, is the largest natural source of aromatic molecules and thus is an attractive feedstock for renewable chemical production. Direct incorporation of isolated lignin into materials has long been research ...

2020

Techno-economic evaluation of biomass-to-fuels with solid-oxide electrolyzer

François Maréchal, Jan Van Herle, Ligang Wang, Hanfei Zhang

Thermochemical biomass-to-fuel conversion requires an increased hydrogen concentration in the syngas derived from gasification, which is currently achieved by water–gas-shift reaction and CO2 removal. State-of-the-art biomass-to-fuels convert less than hal ...

2020