Biomass Chemical Loops: A Sustainable Future

A group of researchers and their team (Zhao et al.) from various Universities (Tsinghua University, China, Southeast University, China, Columbia University, New York, Imperial College London, and The Ohio State University, USA) have surveyed a review on biomass-based chemical loops, its good, bad, and future aspects.

Zhao et al., have discussed the biomass, which is considered to be one of a promising renewable energy resource owing to its high moisture content, low energy density, and complex ash components. Biomass is a major energy source, it is considered to be a carbon-neutral renewable and abundant energy resource. The use of carbon in biomass for energy production, which was obtained from atmospheric CO₂, is considered to be a carbon-neutral fuel. When this biomass is combined with carbon capture technology, then the overall energy conversion progress will be in negative in terms of net CO₂ emission, which is to be termed as BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage). Although these approaches are limited in terms of materials and energy integration, it could lead to truly disruptive technologies for BECCS. Further, they reported that recently, a new generation of transformative energy conversion technologies along with the chemical looping was developed. Therefore, biomass utilization is very essential towards a sustainable future with ever increases the need for carbon-based materials. Chemical looping processes (CLPs) are considered to have a potential in gasification, combustion, and reforming of biomass where the cyclic processes are carried out as a set of subreactions within the use of looping materials (LMs). Biomass is an alternative fuel for CLPs, its resultant product can be energy/heat or syngas. It is a complex mixture of both organic and inorganic materials. The main essential components were the organic materials with the extractives, and fibre or cell wall components, while the inorganic material is comprised of ash components [1].

Zhao et al., further reported about the biomass is compared with coal, the moisture content of biomass is found to be very higher, which leads to a low heating value/energy density for biomass feedstocks. It can also see that the biomass (lignin) has lower oxygen content and higher carbon content than cellulose or hemicellulose. Therefore they believed that biomass with a higher heating value corresponds to higher lignin content.

Figure 1. Chemical looping processes (CLPs) for biomass conversion [1].

Advantages and limitations of biomass are considered to be a good fuel:

Advantages: 1) Renewable nature, 2) Low ignition temperature, 3) Low ash content, 4) Low content of pollutants, 5) Negative emission potential with close to carbon neutral.

Limitations: 1) Low energy density, 2) Low ash melting point, 3) High moisture content, 4) High alkaline and alkaline earth metals contents, 5) Complicated composition with inconsistent feedstock.

The ash contents approximately followed the decreasing order of animal biomass > aquatic biomass > contaminated biomass > herbaceous biomass and agriculture biomass > wood and woody biomass. In general, coal ash yield ranges from 6–52% with a mean percentage of approximately 21%, thus, compared to coal, biomass is usually considered a low ash content solid fuel [2].

Although biomass is considered to be an important energy source, its further development is lessened due to the dependence on fossil fuels. If we have to consider and expect the carbon-neutral nature with significant environmental benefits, then the world is seeking for clean, renewable energy solutions and to reduce the net greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, they discussed biomass-based CLPs are gained of attractive and significant attention with great potential. This provides a sustainable future and a pathway for decarbonized energy and materials production.

However, the raised question is how to get this technology whether in good or bad to attain a sustainable future? Let us now see that, what are the good, bad, and future aspects based upon the CLPs.

Good:

Low energy loss and capacity for inherent CO₂ separation.
No additional energy is required for CO₂ capture (energy is only required for compression for transport) when biomass is used in CLPs.
The minimization of overall exergy loss with appropriate carbon storage leads to a negative carbon balance.
Improvement in the operation of CLPs due to the relatively high quantity of volatile matter, low sulfur, and an ash content of biomass.
To utilize biomass resources in an efficient manner, biomass-based CLPs has to be coupled with the significant potential to effectively remove CO₂ (net) from the atmosphere.

Bad:

Looping material deactivation.
High solid recirculation rate.
The requirement for separation of looping materials and biomass ash.

Future:

Development of biomass gasification processes for syngas generation [3].
Holistic evaluation of the system operating pressure or ensuring the cost-competitiveness of biomass-based CLPs.
Enhancement of the multifunctional nature of LM and its research studies. Linkage of industrial processes and collaboration between the power and chemical industries.
Addition to screening for holistic evaluation of the system.
To obtain energy from biomass waste, biomass-based CLPs are a potential strategy with a net carbon negative balance[4].

Our SNB team recommended this research article to help the reader to know about a new generation of transformative energy with a conversion technology of including chemical looping (CLPs) based on biomass was developed. In order to accelerate the realization of BECCS as a crucial technology, some basic fundamental knowledge should be gained from this research study with other biomass conversion and CLPs technologies to fight against the climatic change. Thus, biomass-based CLPs are found to be an efficient and important technology for the future to startup with carbon-neutral fuels.

References

X. Zhao et al., Energy Environ. Sci.,10, 1885 (2017).
S. V. Vassilev et al., Fuel., 89, 913 (2010).
L.-S. Fan, Chemical Looping Partial Oxidation Gasification: Reforming, and Chemical Syntheses, Cambridge UniversityPress, London (2017).
M. Kathe et al., Energy Environ. Sci., DOI:10.1039/C6EE03701A (2017).

Blog Written By

Dr. Y. Sasikumar

School of Materials Science and Engineering

Tianjin University of Technology, China.

Author Profile

Editors

Dr. A. S. Ganeshraja

Dr. K. Rajkumar

Dr. S. Chandrasekar

Reviewers

Dr. S. Thirumurugan

Dr. K. Vaithinathan

Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search This Blog