Publications related to Biomass

Energy inequality and air pollution nexus in India

Energy usage, inequality, and their impacts are deeply intertwined, especially in India. Every year, cooking using biomass-based solid fuel usage causes death to tens of thousands of Indians, specifically, economically unprivileged people. Solid fuel burni ...

2023

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

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

Metabolic Performance and Fate of Electrons during Nitrate-Reducing Fe(II) Oxidation by the Autotrophic Enrichment Culture KS Grown at Different Initial Fe/N Ratios

Natalia Jakus

Autotrophic nitrate-reducing Fe(II)-oxidizing (NRFeOx) microorganisms fix CO2 and oxidize Fe(II) coupled to denitrification, influencing carbon, iron, and nitrogen cycles in pH-neutral, anoxic environments. However, the distribution of electrons from Fe(II ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

The biofilm ecology of proglacial floodplain streams

Jade Brandani

Glacial forelands figure among the most dynamic landscapes on Earth, and their formation is currently accelerating given glacier shrinkage. Draining these forelands are streams hosting unique microbial communities, which have the capacity to impact both th ...

EPFL2023

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

Modeling the coupled dynamics of stream metabolism and microbial biomass

Tom Ian Battin, Enrico Bertuzzo, Pier Luigi Segatto

Estimating and interpreting ecosystem metabolism remains an important challenge in stream ecology. Here, we propose a novel approach to model, estimate, and predict multiseasonal patterns of stream metabolism (gross primary production [GPP] and ecosystem r ...

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography2020

Predicting thermodynamic performance of biomass gasification plants by applying surrogate models

François Maréchal, Julia Granacher, Maziar Kermani, Ayse Dilan Celebi

Surplus electricity production is anticipated to further increase during summer periods due to the inevitable high penetration of renewable energy sources in our energy system. Potential solutions for sustainable and efficient energy storage need to be exp ...

2020

Co-culture of microalgae-activated sludge for wastewater treatment and biomass production: Exploring their role under different inoculation ratios

Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider

In this study, mixed culture (microalgae:activated sludge) of a photobioreactor (PBR) were investigated at different inoculation ratios (1:0, 9:1, 3:1, 1:1, 0:1 wt/wt). This work was not only to determine the optimal ratio for pollutant remediation and bio ...

Elsevier2020

En route to CO2-containing renewable materials: catalytic synthesis of polycarbonates and non-isocyanate polyhydroxyurethanes derived from cyclic carbonates

Paul Joseph Dyson, Felix Daniel Bobbink, Antoine Philippe Van Muyden

Combining CO2-chemistry with biomass conversion allows renewable polymeric materials including polycarbonates and polyhydroxyurethanes (PHUs) to be generated. The demand for robust materials with modular properties that can be prepared on an industrial sca ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2019

Catalytic valorization of the acetate fraction of biomass to aromatics and its integration into the carboxylate platform

Jeremy Luterbacher, Masoud Talebi Amiri, Ydna Marie Questell-Santiago, Benjamin Pierre Le Monnier, Jher Hau Yeap, Bartosz Rozmyslowicz, Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim Elkhaiary

In many plant species, the acetate fraction is the fourth most prominent fraction by weight after cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, and can be easily extracted as a single stable molecule, acetic acid, at high yields. Despite this, upgrading the acetate ...

2019

Enzymes for second generation biofuels: recent developments and future perspectives

Edgard Gnansounou, Binod Parameswaran

Even though the search for alternative fuels from lignocellulosic biomass started a few decades ago, still it is relatively immature mainly because of few challenges which are yet to be solved for making the process commercially viable. The main challenge ...

2019

A review of the concepts, recent advances and niche applications of the (photo) Fenton process, beyond water/wastewater treatment: Surface functionalization, biomass treatment, combatting cancer and other medical uses

Stefanos Giannakis

The Fenton reaction was discovered over 120 years ago, yet our understanding of the complete reaction mechanism of the seemingly simple iron and hydrogen peroxide reaction (Fe + H2O2) remains unclear, thus limiting its full potential. In this work, the aim ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV2019

Production, characterization and upgrading of biomass-derived acetal-stabilized carbohydrates

Ydna Marie Questell-Santiago

Biomass is an attractive source of renewable carbon-based fuels and chemicals. Multiple research efforts are centered around integrated biorefineries, where all fractions of biomass are converted to fuels or chemical products. These efforts are focused aro ...

EPFL2019

Hyphenated Analytical Techniques for Studying the Speciation and Fate of Contaminants and Nanoparticles in Waste Treatment and Bioenergy Processes

Debora Foppiano

The widespread use of nanoparticles (NPs) and other potentially ecotoxic chemical compounds to enhance the quality of consumer products has raised concern about their fate in the environment. Indeed, those products have to be ultimately disposed of and alo ...

EPFL2019

Catalytic Upgrading of Biomass-Derived Carboxylic Acids to Fuels and Chemicals

Jher Hau Yeap

Our reliance on fossil fuels, which is unsustainable due to dwindling reserves, has led to various environmental issues. Lignocellulosic biomass could serve as a renewable source of carbon and energy for the production of fuels and chemicals. While several ...

EPFL2019

Seasonal variability of groundwater level effects on the growth of Carex cinerascens in lake wetlands

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Luca Bragazza, Mathieu Raymond Santonja, Wenjuan Feng

Groundwater level is crucial for wetland plant growth and reproduction, but the extent of its effect on plant growth can vary along with changed precipitation and temperature at different seasons. In this context, we investigated the effect of two groundwa ...

2020

Selectivity control during the single-step conversion of aliphatic carboxylic acids to linear olefins

Jeremy Luterbacher, Jher Hau Yeap, Florent Emmanuel Héroguel, Bartosz Rozmyslowicz

We have studied the single-step catalytic conversion of biomass-derived aliphatic carboxylic acids to linear olefins via tandem hydrogenation/dehydration reactions. Hexanoic acid was converted to a mixture of hexenes (92.0% selectivity) over silica–alumina ...

2018

Thermo-economic analysis and multi-objective optimisation of lignocellulosic biomass conversion to Fischer-Tropsch fuels

François Maréchal, Emanuela Peduzzi, Guillaume Boissonnet

This paper addresses the techno-economic evaluation and optimisation of processes converting lignocellulosic biomass into liquid fuels, through the development of a suitable framework and the modelling and design of Biomass to Liquids (BTL) processes. In p ...

2018

Production of monomers from lignin during depolymerisation of lignocellulose-containing composition

Jeremy Luterbacher, Li Shuai

The present invention relates to a method for preparing monomers via depolymerisation from lignocellulose-containing biomass. ...

2017