Energy

Concerns about dwindling fossil fuel reserves and climate change, energy independence, and depletion of ecosystem goods and services have driven the development of alternative technologies such as biomass-based fuels (biofuels). Although biofuels may be a step towards alleviating the aforementioned...

A carbon dioxide – water pretreatment process was developed for guayule biomass. The guayule biomass was mixed with water and then loaded to a reactor where it was exposed to a biphasic environment consisting of CO2 rich vapor phase and water rich liquid phase. Then, the biomass was enzymatically...

Solid sorbent carbon capture systems have the potential to require significantly lower regeneration energy compared to aqueous monoethanol amine (MEA) systems. To date, the majority of work on solid sorbents has focused on developing the sorbent materials themselves. In order to advance these...

The development of fuels from alternative and renewable sources to replace commercial petroleum products has been a subject of increasing research in recent years. At present, there are few economically feasible processes to produce jet fuel from plant oils and animal fats, especially with non-...

Due to the recent surge in energy costs and uncertainties in fuel prices, there is significant interest in seeking alternative sources of energy particularly from renewable such as biomass. Indirect liquefaction of biomass (via the thermo-chemical conversion to syngas followed by liquefaction via...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the power controlled effect on microwave-accelerated simultaneous extraction and transesterification (in situ transesterification) of dry algal biomass. Experimental runs were designed using a response surface methodology and the process...

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells have received great attention as an alternative power source for transportation and stationary applications. A membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA) that generates electricity by electrochemical reactions consists of proton exchange membrane as an electrolyte...

Here we propose to develop a farm-scale biorefining system that can convert cellulosic biomass into useable hydrogen gas. In particular, we focus on the development of cost-effective procedures for biomass pretreatment and catalysts for alkaline hydrothermal treatment, which is less studied as...

Amine-based chemisorption of CO 2 is a promising near term option for the decarbonisation of large, fixed-point CO 2 emission sources [1] . However, the operational expenditure (OPEX) associated with this technology imposes a significant energy penalty on the power plant. As it is the solvent which...

Variety of oxygenated compounds are detected in the pyrolysis oils, which leads to a number of associated problems such as low stability and reduced heating values. As a consequence, complete deoxygenation of bio oils with minimum hydrogen uptake is one of the proposed strategies toward improving...