Biorefineries ― Targeting Energy, High Value Products and Waste Valorisation

This book addresses the potential of the transformation of biomass into a wide range of marketable products, and examines the biological, biochemical, physical and thermal processing of biomass into products such as fuels, power, heat, feeds, chemicals and materials. Respective chapters explore various topics including biomass characterization, biomass pre-conditioning and lifecycle analysis, aspects that are supplemented by a global overview of their implementation in current pilot bio-refineries. Providing a valuable resource to energy engineers, chemical engineers, biotechnologists and economists, this book will also be of great interest to students and policymakers.

Miriam Rabacal obtained a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), Lisboa, Portugal, in 2010. During her final project, focused in experimental studies on small scale biomass pellets combustion, she held a 6 months Initiation to Research grant in IDMEC/IST. After a 4 months internship in Karunya University, Coimbatore, India, in the topic of CFD of small scale biomass pellets combustion, she returned to IST for a 3 months Researcher Grant at IDMEC/IST on experimental studies of small scale biomass pellets combustion. In 2011 she started her PhD studies with a FCT Grant on “Experimental and Computational Study of Co-Firing Coal and Non-Wood-Based Biomass: Operation, Combustion and Emission Characteristics” supervised by Professor Mario Costa from IST, and co-supervised by Professor Andreas Kempf from University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. During her studies she has visited Imperial College London, UK, for 6 months, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany for 3 months, and University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, for 18 months. She has participated in the European project COST Action 901 through a Short Term Scientific Mission and holds a PRACE high performance computing resource grant.

Ana Ferreira is a Post-doctoral in the area of Environment and Energy at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST). She graduated and obtained her master degree in Chemistry, in the environmental area of analysis of atmospheric aerosols and atmospheric exposure, at Faculty of Science of University of Lisbon in 2005 and 2008, respectively. In 2013 completed her PhD in Environmental Engineering at IST of University of Lisbon. Currently she is a Post-doctoral researcher at Institute of Mechanical Engineering of IST, on alternative biomass and biofuels. She has 6 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and more than 25 papers in international conferences. She has been awarded third place in YEAR 2012 – The Young European Arena of Research during the Transportation Research Arena (TRA2012) in Athens, in 2012. Areas of interest are biomass, biomass conversion (e.g. combustion and pyrolysis), pollutant emissions, biofuels, energy and environment and life cycle assessment.

Carla Silva received the Mechanical Engineering degree (five year course) in 2000 and the PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2005, at Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), University of Lisbon, Portugal. She went for a post doc at both IST and University of Michigan working on CO2 mitigation in road vehicles. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of Instituto Superior Tecnico since 2008. She teaches the courses of Energy management, and Industrial Ecology. She has supervised more than 30 MSc and Phd students. She has 1 book, 2 book chapters, 32 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and more than 50 papers in international conferences. She has been awarded 7 prizes of recognition, including the 3M prize for innovation and Portuguese Engineers Association innovation and best interim prizes. Areas of interest are new fuels; biomass; alternative vehicles simulation; energy and environment; life cycle assessment.

Mario Costa is a Full Professor in the area of Environment and Energy at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST). He graduated in Chemical Engineering at University of Coimbra in 1984, obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London in 1992 and his Habilitation in Mechanical Engineering at Technical University of Lisbon in 2009. Currently, he is Vice-President of the Mechanical Engineering Department of IST, Coordinator of the Integrated Master in Mechanical Engineering of IST and Member of the Scientific Board of IST. Presently, he teaches the courses of Thermodynamics, Renewables Energies and Integrated Energy Systems. He has supervised more than 100 MSc and PhD students. His main fields of research are coal and biomass combustion, pollutants formation and emissions, mild and oxy-fuel combustion, combustion in porous media and gasification and pyrolysis of biomass. He has participated in more than 40 national and international projects in the area of Energy and Environment and has (co-authored) 1 book, 80 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and more than 100 papers in international conferences. He was the recipient of the Caleb Brett Award of the Institute of Energy in 1991, of the Sugden Award of the British Section of the Combustion Institute in 1991 and of the Premio Cientifico UTL/Santander Totta in 2010.