Biofuels and Bioplastics in Sustainable Development

A special issue of Inventions (ISSN 2411-5134). This special issue belongs to the section "Inventions and Innovation in Energy and Thermal/Fluidic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 8795

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Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Ambiente, del Territorio e delle Infrastrutture, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
Interests: irreversible thermodynamics; thermodynamics of biosystems; exergoeconomics; thermoeconomics; life cycle assessment; sustainability
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In this Special Issue, we present the cutting-edge topic of "Biofuels and Bioplastics in Sustainable Development", wherein engineering prowess and innovation converge to address critical challenges in biofuels and bioplastics.
Sustainability and sustainable development are taking center stage in today’s world, particularly in the context of global warming and localized pollution. A multidisciplinary perspective is integral to sustainability, and recent decades have witnessed a surge in corresponding research.

Biofuels have emerged as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, driven by environmental concerns and resource depletion. Key characteristics include easy availability, technical and environmental feasibility, and economic competitiveness. Biofuels' diverse biomass sources offer supply diversification, enabling localized production and harnessing photosynthesis for CO2 utilization.

Optimizing biofuel production processes is imperative for transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives. Join us in exploring the forefront of engineering, innovation, and invention within the dynamic realms of biofuels and bioplastics. We welcome original manuscripts and review articles addressing this topic.

Dr. Umberto Lucia
Dr. Giulia Grisolia
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • biofuels
  • bacteria in biofuels production
  • algae for biofuels production
  • biotechnology for fuels
  • bioplastics
  • thermodynamics and industrial bioengineering
  • industrial bioengineering
  • sustainability
  • climate change
  • pollution

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 4448 KiB  
Article
Analysis of Oscillating Combustion for NOx−Reduction in Pulverized Fuel Boilers
by Nicklas Jolibois, Krasimir Aleksandrov, Manuela Hauser, Dieter Stapf, Helmut Seifert, Jörg Matthes, Patrick Waibel, Markus Vogelbacher, Hubert B. Keller and Hans-Joachim Gehrmann
Inventions 2021, 6(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions6010009 - 19 Jan 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3316
Abstract
Thermal power plants in different fields are regularly adapted to the state-of-the-art emissions standards, applying “The Best Available Techniques Reference”. Since 2016 in the power plant area new, more stringent limits for power plant units with a thermal output of more than 300 [...] Read more.
Thermal power plants in different fields are regularly adapted to the state-of-the-art emissions standards, applying “The Best Available Techniques Reference”. Since 2016 in the power plant area new, more stringent limits for power plant units with a thermal output of more than 300 MW operated with black coal are valid. Usually, in order to reach the new limits e.g., for NOX emissions, downstream reduction processes (Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction, SNCR or Selective Catalytic Reduction) are applied, which use of operating resources (essentially ammonia water) thereby increase. By the means of an experimentally validated process, by which pulverized fuel is fed by oscillation through a swirl burner into a pilot combustion chamber with a thermal output of 2.5 MW, nitrogen oxides can be reduced without further activities, for instance from 450 mg/mN3 in non-oscillation operation mode (0 Hz) to 280 mg/mN3 in oscillation operation mode (3.5 Hz), normalized to an O2–content of 6% each. These findings were patented in EP3084300. Particularly promising are the experiments which utilize oscillation of a large portion of the burn out air instead of the fuel in order to minimize the fatigue of the pulverized fuel oscillator, amongst others. Thereby, the nitrogen conversion rate, which describes the ratio of NOX to fuel nitrogen, including thermal NOX can be reduced from 26% for non-oscillation operation mode down to 16%. The present findings show that fuel oscillation alone is not sufficient to achieve nitrogen oxides concentrations below the legislative values. Therefore, a combination of different primary (and secondary) measures is required. This paper presents the experimental results for oscillating coal-dust firing. Furthermore, an expert model based on a multivariate regression is developed to evaluate the experimental results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biofuels and Bioplastics in Sustainable Development)
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13 pages, 5828 KiB  
Article
A UAV-Based Thermal-Imaging Approach for the Monitoring of Urban Landfills
by Giovanni Tanda, Marco Balsi, Paolo Fallavollita and Valter Chiarabini
Inventions 2020, 5(4), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions5040055 - 9 Nov 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4105
Abstract
The monitoring of waste disposal sites is important in order to minimize leakages of biogas, produced by anaerobic digestion and potentially explosive and detrimental to the environment. In this research, thermal imaging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been proposed as a diagnostic [...] Read more.
The monitoring of waste disposal sites is important in order to minimize leakages of biogas, produced by anaerobic digestion and potentially explosive and detrimental to the environment. In this research, thermal imaging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been proposed as a diagnostic tool to monitor urban landfills. Since the anaerobic decomposition produces heat along with biogas, thermal anomalies recorded over the soil are likely to be associated with local biogas escaping from the landfill terrain and leaving a local thermal print. A simple and novel approach, based only on the processing of thermal maps gathered by the remote sensing surveys, has been proposed for the estimation of the fugitive methane emissions from landfills. Two case studies, concerning two Italian landfills, have been presented. For one of them (Mount Scarpino, Genoa), significant thermal anomalies were identified during several UAV flights and the relevant thermal images processed to obtain a rough estimation of the associated methane leakages. For the second landfill (Scala Erre, Sassari), the thermal map did not reveal any anomaly attributable to local biogas emission. Despite some limitations outlined in the paper, the present approach is proposed as an innovative method to identify significant biogas leakages from an urban landfill and to provide a preliminary evaluation of the methane production potential. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biofuels and Bioplastics in Sustainable Development)
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