Overview of Biomass Conversion Processes and Separation and Purification Technologies in Biorefineries

This chapter provides an introduction and overview of the important biomass conversion processes, including biochemical and thermochemical conversions and the potential separation and purification technologies in biorefineries. The chapter introduces a number of representative value-added chemical building blocks and different biorefinery scenarios. It then reviews separation and purification technologies in current and future biorefineries. A section is dedicated to the challenges and opportunities in many of the plausible separation and purification technologies in biorefineries. These include equilibrium-based separation processes such as absorption, distillation, distillation, liquid-liquid extraction, and supercritical fluid extraction; affinity-based separation such as adsorption, ion exchange, and simulated moving bed; membrane separation, solid-liquid extraction, and hybrid reaction-separation systems. Fermentation, bipolar membrane electrodialysis, reactive distillation, and reactive absorption are suitable for separation of products obtained by esterification such as biodiesel production. Integrated bioprocessing, consolidated bioprocessing integrating pre-treatment, bioprocessing and separation and purification offer tremendously exciting new opportunities in future biorefineries.