Skip to main content

PROSPECTS ON PHOTOBIOREFINERY

Very recently, Prof. Dr. K. Faungnawakij and his research group have summarized a mini review report on an emerging renewable technique of Photobiorefinery. This is one of the beyond technique of Artificial Photosynthesis (AP) [1].

Despite great promises, AP technologies for solar H2 production and CO2 reduction are far uncompetitive to other promising technologies at the current stage.

However, despite an enormous effort, time, and budget paid on AP-related researches throughout several decades, AP technologies have struggled to strive beyond laboratory demonstration except a very few exceptions [2]. This bitter reality makes the translation of this excellent science to practical application questionable [3].

Technoeconomic analysis shows that without achieving the aggressive technology targets, this technology will not be commercially viable. This has directed the research community towards the development of highly efficient yet expensive devices.

While tremendous progress has been demonstrated, the poor profitability prospect originating from low profit margins, high energy requirement, and impractical engineering remains unaddressed. It is time to step back and redefine the alternative targets which are closer to profitable investment, rather than a specific locking-in technology with insignificant returns.

Recently, photocatalytic biorefinery, herein defined as photobiorefinery, has emerged as a promising approach to apply the recently-advanced AP knowledge for near practical or industrial applications.

Biorefinery, an analog to petroleum refinery, is the processing of biomass into a multitude of commercializable bio-based chemicals, materials, fuels and energy [4].

Photobiorefinery has emerged as one of the most promising approaches to apply the AP knowledge for near practical industrial applications.

Figure 1. Photobiorefinery concept for the conversion of biomass to sustainable chemicals. Starting with plants, the lignocellulosic biomass (lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose) and triglyceride are obtained as raw materials for photocatalytic conversion to produce renewable chemicals and fuels. The chemicals can be recycled or undergone combustion or decomposition processes to CO2. The CO2 can be utilized directly via artificial photosynthesis (AP) or returned to plants via natural photosynthesis [1].

If we could use the ubiquitous sunlight to convert this renewable resource into fuels or value-added chemicals and reduce the biomass waste burnt and greenhouse gases, the energy and environmental problems could be simultaneously solved, similar to the ultimate goals of AP. The concept of photobiorefinery depicted in Figure 1 shows that the typical feedstocks for this process consist of lignocellulosic biomass (lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose) and triglyceride. Lignin can be converted to valuable aromatic compounds.

 The Following Merits of Photobiorefinery:

Photobiorefinery requires much less activation energy than photocatalytic water splitting even though both processes are endergonic (ΔGRT>0) [5].

The oxidation potential of biomass and its derivatives is −0.2–0.26 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), much more facile compared to 1.23 V vs RHE of water oxidation [6].

Thus, biomass and its derivatives can serve as scavengers for low energy photogenerated holes, reducing the overall potential requirement for solar H2 production or CO2 reduction, and producing valuable chemicals simultaneously [7].

Under the same reaction condition, photobiorefinery generally has higher quantum yield (QY) compared to the classical AP approach.

The greatest challenge lies in the mechanistic understanding of this complex chemistry and overcoming the slow kinetics. Using model molecules and utilizing systematic investigations similar to the approach inspired from CO2 reduction literature, as well as establishing a standardized protocol similar to those done in solar water splitting field likely accelerate the progress in photocatalytic biomass valorization towards commercialization.

References

[1]. T. Butburee, P. Chakthranont, C. Phawa, K. Faungnawakij, ChemCatChem 2020, 12, 1873–1890

[2]. Y. Goto, T. Hisatomi, Q. Wang, T. Higashi, K. Ishikiriyama, T. Maeda, Y. Sakata, S. Okunaka, H. Tokudome, M. Katayama, S. Akiyama, H. Nishiyama, Y. Inoue, T. Takewaki, T. Setoyama, T. Minegishi, T. Takata, T. Yamada, K. Domen, Joule 2018, 2, 509.

[3]. M. Antonietti, A. Savateev, Chem. Rec. 2018, 18, 969.

[4]. E. de Jong, A. Higson, P. Walsh, M. Wellisch, IEA Bioenergy, Task42 Biorefinery 2012, 34.

[5]. T. P. A. Ruberu, N. C. Nelson, I. I. Slowing, J. Vela, J. Phy. Chem. Lett. 2012, 3, 2798.

[6]. Z. Wu, J. Wang, Z. Zhou, G. Zhao, J. Mater. Chem. A 2017, 5, 12407.

[7]. X. Lu, S. Xie, H. Yang, Y. Tong, H. Ji, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2014, 43, 7581.

 Blog Written By

Dr. A. S. GANESHRAJA

National College

Thiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu, India

Contact Us click here

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Biomimetic Eye with Perovskite Nanowire

The term “Biomimetics” derived from Ancient Greek, refers to life imitation. It is an interdisciplinary field in which comes from biology, engineering, and chemistry concepts. Biomimetics is applied to the synthesis of  machines, or devices, which have functions that mimic real-life biological processes.  Prof. Fan Zhiyoung , Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China, and his team (from the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA) has reported on the effective biological eye results with a new development “Biomimetic Eye” with supportive components such as hemispherical shape retina and perovskite nanowires  [1] .  Our eyes possess exceptional image and sensing nature, which selectively express the wide field of view, resolution, and sensitivity [2] . A specialty of biomimetic eye parts with such highlighted characteristics is a desirable one, specifically in robotics
Post a Comment
Read more

Pottery Shard CNTs Discovery in Sixth Century: Keeladi, Tamilnadu, India

Prof. Manivannan et al., and his research collaboration team have been investigated the discovery of carbon nanotubes in sixth century BC potteries that have obtained from Keeladi, Tamilandu, India. This investigation has reported in Nature publication journal of “Scientific Reports” on 13 th November 2020 [ 1 ]. This is one of the most interesting reports and scientific research from Keeladi excavation located in the southern part of India. Keeladi Excavation: The excavation was first started in Pallisanthai Thidal which is in the north of Manalur, about a kilometer east of the town of Keeladi in Sivagangai district, Tamilnadu, India. Number of various archaeological residues were found in this excavation, when plowing the land around the site. The first survey was conducted in 2013 in the vicinity of the Vaigai river, 293 sites were identified during the study including Keeladi, and all this sites have an archaeological residues [ 2 ]. A part of excavation, researchers found carbon
Post a Comment
Read more

Bifunctional Water Splitting Catalysts: Large Current Density

Fuel cell technology is one of the most emerging fields with ecofriendly and everlasting energy source way of producing energy for the urgent requirements. Further it needs to be improved to make it cheap and more environmental friendly. Among all fuel cells, the hydrogen (H 2 ) and oxygen (O 2 ) fuel cell is the one with zero carbon emission, more ecofriendly, high potential and the byproduct is just only the water. However, supplying the fuels in the purest form (at least the H 2 ) is very essential to ensure higher life cycles and less decay in cell efficiency. Nowadays, commercially available large scale H 2 production is mainly dependent on steam reforming of fossil fuels which can also generates CO 2 along with H 2 and the source that is going to be depleted, and this byproduct is not environmental friendly. Therefore, an emerging alternate technology is needed; in this case the electrolysis of water has given a greater attention than the steam reforming.  Recently many sc
Post a Comment
Read more

Efficient Bio-Diesel Synthesis: Reusable Magnetic Catalysis

Prof. Anping Wang et al., with his research collaborative team from china ( 1. Guizhou University, China; and 2. Guizhou Normal University, China) and India (National Chemical Laboratory, India) have reviewed the research over views on the preparation methods, physicochemical properties, stabilization/functionalization, and the catalytic applications of magnetic materials, including magnetic acids, bases, enzymes, and acid-base bifunctional materials for the synthesis of bio-diesel. Here, we discuss only the preparation of efficient bio-diesel with merits and applications of magnetic nanocatalyst for the bio-diesel preparation . Bio-diesel products are mainly attain from bio mass feed stocks, which gives more attention in the biorefinery research affairs [1]. A green way of renewable liquid biofuels are emergency required one in present atmosphere. Among the various classes, best one is renewable diesel fuel, the chemical content of long-chain fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) or ethy
Post a Comment
Read more

Threatened Species: An Alert of Red List from IUCN

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) organization was established in 1964 to safeguard our natural species information details. This organization helps to identify the species when these are diminished due to abnormal issues in environmental forces or evolutionary changes in their population numbers. IUCN was recommended the information on the global risk status of plants, fungus, and animal species [1] . Overall world, the term “Biodiversity” and their conservation progress is an attentive one. As per IUCN, the announced Red List shows a critical condition of the world’s natural biodiversity. The major part of assessments representing on the Red List (in IU CN) are accounted out by following government/non-government members:  Species Survival Commission  (SSC).  Red List Partners .  Red List Authorities  (RLAs).  O ther specialists (who working on assessment projects).  It gives information about the probable range, habitat, population size, ecology, threats, and co
Post a Comment
Read more

Wearable Laser-Induced Graphene Mask

Prof. Ruquan Ye, from city University of Hong Kong and his collaboration with Prof. Chunlei Zhu, Ben Zhong Tang, and their research team have developed photo-thermally laser-induced graphene as a wearable mask with superior antibacterial capacity. Face masks have become a life-sustaining role in fighting against the outbreak of diseases like EBOLA and COVID-19. However, improper usage and disposal of masks may lead to secondary transmission around the globe. The vital role of the mask is a primary source to prevent us from COVID-19. In this pandemic situation, we must be alert about the used mask materials. The materials should safeguard us from COVID-19 as well as it must be bio-degradable material to safeguard around the world.       The masks, currently available in the market are of single-use with/without filtering layers of thermoplastic materials like polypropylene. The degradation of these used masks takes at least 10 year
Post a Comment
Read more

Hot Hole-Deriven Water Splitting via LSPR Metal Nanostructures

The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) in metal nanostructures is one of the most efficient materials for the futuristic energy, environmental science and industry. The new era is the ability to significantly drive and promote photocatalytic reactions and photodetection which acts as an interfacial energy transfer to adsorbate molecules and semiconductors.  The combination of plasmonic noble metallic nanostructures with semiconductors for plasmon-enhanced visible light-driven water splitting (WS) has attracted considerable attention. WS is one of the most capable way to save solar energy into other useful energy applications. In WS, solar energy is converted to chemical energy mainly in the form of hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the review reports indicate that the highest reported quantum efficiency for overall WS achieved is 57% with NiO/NaTaO 3 :La photocatalyst under the excitation wavelength of 270 nm [1]. Its large scale commercial applications are still lacking due to
Post a Comment
Read more

Micro-Alloying of ‘Stainless Mg’ via Ca: Exceptional Corrosion Resistance

German Scientists have established an alloy with ultra-high-purity of magnesium of exceptionally low corrosion rate– Stainless Magnesium approach, via alloying of pure magnesium (Mg) with a tiny amounts of calcium (Ca) has been reported in Materials Horizons on 24 th November 2020. Mg is found to be the lightest structural metal with various properties like high strength-to-weight ratio, excellent electrochemical characteristics, Young’s modulus similar to human bone with low cost. Mg is widely used in aerospace, electronic, automotive, biomedical and energy-storage applications owing to its high strength, low weight, and excellent electrochemical properties, due to its abundance in the earth’s crust. Particularly, Mg possess light weight than aluminium (Al) and makes attractive from a sustainable perspective. Therefore, replacing of Al with ‘ Stainless Mg ’ in flights and cars will reduce the fuel consumption with free of carbon dioxide emissions. However, its usage is limited and r
Post a Comment
Read more

Giant Spontaneous Hall Effect Without a Magnet

Surprising phenomenon in the solid state physics was “ The Hall effect, which requires normally magnetic fields, can also be generated completely in a different way by without the magnet to give an extreme strength ” – Published by Sami Dzsabera  et al., in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on 19 th February 2021. Weyl–Kondo semimetal have been discovered recently, the three-dimensional (3D) Dirac cones that describes with massless relativistic quasiparticles, which was stabilized by breaking via  either time-reversal symmetry (TRS) or inversion symmetry (IS). Sami Dzsabera  et al., have reported the discovery of  a giant spontaneous Hall effect in 3D materials, which have not only identifies an ideal technique. However, it will demonstrates a strong correlations that can drive extreme topological responses, which we can expect to trigger for future work. Further, they reported that the giant spontaneous Hall effect of semimetal seems to be the non-centrosymmetr
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing of Corrosion Resistant Alloys via Percolation Theory

Canada and USA Scientists have reported on designing of corrosion-resistant alloys via percolation theory and published in Nature Materials on 01 February 2021. Nickel–chromium, Iron–chromium binary alloys can serve as the prototypical corrosion-resistant metals owing to its presence of a nanometre-thick protective passive oxide film. The main key criterion for good passive behavior is the passive film should be compromised via a scratch or abrasive wear that can be reformed with a little metal dissolution. This could be a principal reason for the stainless steels and other chromium containing alloys that are used for critical applications which ranges from nuclear reactor components to biomedical implants. A long-standing unanswered question in corrosion science is the unravelling of the compositional dependence of the electrochemical behavior of the alloys [ 1, 2 ]. The discovery of the family of these alloys were increased its rate with the advent of artificial intelligence, da
Post a Comment
Read more