Breakthrough Technologies for the Biorefining of Organic Solid and Liquid Wastes

Organic solid and liquid wastes contain large amounts of energy, nutrients, and water, and should not be perceived as merely waste. Recycling, composting, and combustion of non-recyclables have been practiced for decades to capture the energy and values from municipal solid wastes. Treatment and disposal have been the primary management strategy for wastewater. As new technologies are emerging, alternative options for the utilization of both solid wastes and wastewater have become available. Considering the complexity of the chemical, physical, and biological properties of these wastes, multiple technologies may be required to maximize the energy and value recovery from the wastes. For this purpose, biorefin- ing tends to be an appropriate approach to completely utilize the energy and value available in wastes. Research has demonstrated that non-recyclable waste materials and bio-solids can be converted into usable heat, electricity, fuel, and chemicals through a variety of processes, and the liquid waste streams have the potential to support crop and algae growth and provide other energy recovery and food production options. In this paper, we propose new biorefining schemes aimed at organic solid and liquid wastes from municipal sources, food and biological processing plants, and animal production facilities. Four new breakthrough technologies-namely, vacuum-assisted thermophilic anaerobic digestion, extended aquaponics, oily wastes to biodiesel via glycerolysis, and microwave-assisted thermochemical conversion-can be incorporated into the biorefining schemes, thereby enabling the complete utilization of those wastes for the production of chemicals, fertilizer, energy （biogas, syngas, biodiesel, and bio-oil）, foods, and feeds, and resulting in clean water and a significant reduction in pollutant emissions.

Progress in thermodynamic simulation and system optimization of pyrolysis and gasification of biomass

Due to the shortage of fossil energy,biomass has a potential to be a very promising alternative source.Unfortunately,a large part of biomass resources worldwide causes serious environmental pollution,low value-added utilization and energy waste due to unsustainable utilization of biomass.Simulation and optimization of the thermochemical utilization of biomass resources is a hot issue in the industry and academia,which can provide the relationship between the utilizations of biomass with sustainable objective and compositions of biomass,operational parameters,etc.This review focused on the theoretical research progress of sustainable utilization of biomass resources from three aspects:basic thermochemical data estimation,process simulation and system optimization of pyrolysis and gasification.And the application of artificial intelligence as a tool in the field of above three aspects was also introduced.Advantages and limitations of current methods,as well as future opportunities and challenges were also discussed.