Bio-Oils Produced from Waste Biomass and Syngas

摘要

There are two broadly defined approaches to convert biomass into biochemicals. The first one is a typical fermentation approach where a genetically engineered microbe processes biomass into useful chemicals that can be produced downstream. This method, though ingenious, mostly requires plant-based sugars or oils which are not yet cost effective and tend to have an overall negative effect on the evnironment. The second approach is to use traditional chemical engineering techniques such as gasification (of biomass) to produce gas (usually hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide) that can be further reacted to produce valuable chemicals. However, this approach is not economically viable at small scales as it is complex and capital intensive. Hence, there is a real need to develop a technology that overcomes the shortfall of traditional approaches.