Biodiesel is a promising alternative, and renewable, fuel. As its production increases, so does production of the principle co-product, crude glycerol. The effective utilization of crude glycerol will contribute to the viability of biodiesel. In this review, composition and quality factors of crude glycerol are discussed. The value-added utilization opportunities of crude glycerol are reviewed. The majority of crude glycerol is used as feedstock for production of other value-added chemicals, followed by animal feeds.
Abstract:A review was conducted on the use of thermochemical biomass gasification for producing biofuels, biopower and chemicals. The upstream processes for gasification are similar to other biomass processing methods. However, challenges remain in the gasification and downstream processing for viable commercial applications. The challenges with gasification are to understand the effects of operating conditions on gasification reactions for reliably predicting and optimizing the product compositions, and for obtaining maximal efficiencies. Product gases can be converted to biofuels and chemicals such as Fischer-Tropsch fuels, green gasoline, hydrogen, dimethyl ether, ethanol, methanol, and higher alcohols. Processes and challenges for these conversions are also summarized.
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