Chapter 5. Recent advances in processing of biomass feedstocks for high added value outlets through bio-greening pathways

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-140
Catalysts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1279
Author(s):  
Manuel Checa ◽  
Sergio Nogales-Delgado ◽  
Vicente Montes ◽  
José María Encinar

Once a biorefinery is ready to operate, the main processed materials need to be completely evaluated in terms of many different factors, including disposal regulations, technological limitations of installation, the market, and other societal considerations. In biorefinery, glycerol is the main by-product, representing around 10% of biodiesel production. In the last few decades, the large-scale production of biodiesel and glycerol has promoted research on a wide range of strategies in an attempt to valorize this by-product, with its transformation into added value chemicals being the strategy that exhibits the most promising route. Among them, C3 compounds obtained from routes such as hydrogenation, oxidation, esterification, etc. represent an alternative to petroleum-based routes for chemicals such as acrolein, propanediols, or carboxylic acids of interest for the polymer industry. Another widely studied and developed strategy includes processes such as reforming or pyrolysis for energy, clean fuels, and materials such as activated carbon. This review covers recent advances in catalysts used in the most promising strategies considering both chemicals and energy or fuel obtention. Due to the large variety in biorefinery industries, several potential emergent valorization routes are briefly summarized.


2003 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Van Hamme ◽  
Ajay Singh ◽  
Owen P. Ward

SUMMARY Recent advances in molecular biology have extended our understanding of the metabolic processes related to microbial transformation of petroleum hydrocarbons. The physiological responses of microorganisms to the presence of hydrocarbons, including cell surface alterations and adaptive mechanisms for uptake and efflux of these substrates, have been characterized. New molecular techniques have enhanced our ability to investigate the dynamics of microbial communities in petroleum-impacted ecosystems. By establishing conditions which maximize rates and extents of microbial growth, hydrocarbon access, and transformation, highly accelerated and bioreactor-based petroleum waste degradation processes have been implemented. Biofilters capable of removing and biodegrading volatile petroleum contaminants in air streams with short substrate-microbe contact times (<60 s) are being used effectively. Microbes are being injected into partially spent petroleum reservoirs to enhance oil recovery. However, these microbial processes have not exhibited consistent and effective performance, primarily because of our inability to control conditions in the subsurface environment. Microbes may be exploited to break stable oilfield emulsions to produce pipeline quality oil. There is interest in replacing physical oil desulfurization processes with biodesulfurization methods through promotion of selective sulfur removal without degradation of associated carbon moieties. However, since microbes require an environment containing some water, a two-phase oil-water system must be established to optimize contact between the microbes and the hydrocarbon, and such an emulsion is not easily created with viscous crude oil. This challenge may be circumvented by application of the technology to more refined gasoline and diesel substrates, where aqueous-hydrocarbon emulsions are more easily generated. Molecular approaches are being used to broaden the substrate specificity and increase the rates and extents of desulfurization. Bacterial processes are being commercialized for removal of H2S and sulfoxides from petrochemical waste streams. Microbes also have potential for use in removal of nitrogen from crude oil leading to reduced nitric oxide emissions provided that technical problems similar to those experienced in biodesulfurization can be solved. Enzymes are being exploited to produce added-value products from petroleum substrates, and bacterial biosensors are being used to analyze petroleum-contaminated environments.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (22) ◽  
pp. 8222
Author(s):  
Yide Su ◽  
Weiwei Zhang ◽  
Aili Zhang ◽  
Wenju Shao

Environmental issues have prompted the vigorous development of biorefineries that use agricultural waste and other biomass feedstock as raw materials. However, most current biorefinery products are cellulosic ethanol. There is an urgent need for biorefineries to expand into new bioproducts. Isobutanol is an important bulk chemical with properties that are close to gasoline, making it a very promising biofuel. The use of microorganisms to produce isobutanol has been extensively studied, but there is still a considerable gap to achieving the industrial production of isobutanol from biomass. This review summarizes current metabolic engineering strategies that have been applied to biomass isobutanol production and recent advances in the production of isobutanol from different biomass feedstocks.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Reggiani ◽  
Jocelyn Fiorina ◽  
Sinan Gezici ◽  
Simone Morosi ◽  
Montse Najar

The context refers to “any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity, where an entity can be a person, place, or physical object.” Radio context awareness is defined as the ability of detecting and estimating a system state or parameter, either globally or concerning one of its components, in a radio system for enhancing performance at the physical, network, or application layers. In this paper, we review the fundamentals of context awareness and the recent advances in the main radio techniques that increase the context awareness and smartness, posing challenges and renewed opportunities to added-value applications in the context of the next generation of wireless networks.


Synthesis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (11) ◽  
pp. 1617-1624
Author(s):  
Vincent Coeffard ◽  
Jérôme Fischer ◽  
Pierrick Nun

In the past decade, the field of visible-light-mediated photocatalysis has been particularly thriving by offering innovative synthetic tools for the construction of functionalized architectures from simple and readily available substrates. One strategy that has been of interest is energy transfer catalysis, which is a powerful way of activating a substrate or an intermediate by using the combination of light and a relevant photosensitizer. This review deals with recent advances in energy transfer catalysis applied to phenols, which are ubiquitous in chemistry both as starting materials and as high-added-value products. Processes involving energy transfer from the excited photosensitizer to ground state oxygen and to phenol-containing substrates will be described.1 Introduction2 Intermolecular Processes2.1 Reactions with Singlet Oxygen2.2 [2+2] Cycloadditions3 Intramolecular Transformations4 Conclusions and Outlook


1988 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 525-530
Author(s):  
Raffaele G. Gratton

The use CCD detectors has allowed a major progress in abundance derivations for globular cluster stars in the last years. Abundances deduced from high dispersion spectra now correlates well with other abundance indicators. I discuss some problems concerning the derivation of accurate metal abundances for globular clusters using high dispersion spectra from both the old photographic and the most recent CCD data. The discrepant low abundances found by Cohen (1980), from photographic material for M71 giants, are found to be due to the use of too high microturbulences.


Author(s):  
B. Lencova ◽  
G. Wisselink

Recent progress in computer technology enables the calculation of lens fields and focal properties on commonly available computers such as IBM ATs. If we add to this the use of graphics, we greatly increase the applicability of design programs for electron lenses. Most programs for field computation are based on the finite element method (FEM). They are written in Fortran 77, so that they are easily transferred from PCs to larger machines.The design process has recently been made significantly more user friendly by adding input programs written in Turbo Pascal, which allows a flexible implementation of computer graphics. The input programs have not only menu driven input and modification of numerical data, but also graphics editing of the data. The input programs create files which are subsequently read by the Fortran programs. From the main menu of our magnetic lens design program, further options are chosen by using function keys or numbers. Some options (lens initialization and setting, fine mesh, current densities, etc.) open other menus where computation parameters can be set or numerical data can be entered with the help of a simple line editor. The "draw lens" option enables graphical editing of the mesh - see fig. I. The geometry of the electron lens is specified in terms of coordinates and indices of a coarse quadrilateral mesh. In this mesh, the fine mesh with smoothly changing step size is calculated by an automeshing procedure. The options shown in fig. 1 allow modification of the number of coarse mesh lines, change of coordinates of mesh points or lines, and specification of lens parts. Interactive and graphical modification of the fine mesh can be called from the fine mesh menu. Finally, the lens computation can be called. Our FEM program allows up to 8000 mesh points on an AT computer. Another menu allows the display of computed results stored in output files and graphical display of axial flux density, flux density in magnetic parts, and the flux lines in magnetic lenses - see fig. 2. A series of several lens excitations with user specified or default magnetization curves can be calculated and displayed in one session.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 1022-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenbo Ma ◽  
Nikolaos Kaplaneris ◽  
Xinyue Fang ◽  
Linghui Gu ◽  
Ruhuai Mei ◽  
...  

This review summarizes recent advances in C–S and C–Se formations via transition metal-catalyzed C–H functionalization utilizing directing groups to control the site-selectivity.


2006 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 109-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Stockdale ◽  
Michael Bruno ◽  
Helder Ferreira ◽  
Elisa Garcia-Wilson ◽  
Nicola Wiechens ◽  
...  

In the 30 years since the discovery of the nucleosome, our picture of it has come into sharp focus. The recent high-resolution structures have provided a wealth of insight into the function of the nucleosome, but they are inherently static. Our current knowledge of how nucleosomes can be reconfigured dynamically is at a much earlier stage. Here, recent advances in the understanding of chromatin structure and dynamics are highlighted. The ways in which different modes of nucleosome reconfiguration are likely to influence each other are discussed, and some of the factors likely to regulate the dynamic properties of nucleosomes are considered.


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