About this book series

Annual global biomass production is about 220 billion dry tons or 4,500 EJ, equivalent to 8.1 times the world’s energy consumption in 2020 (556 EJ). On the other hand, world-proven oil reserves at the end of 2020 reached 1732.4 billion barrels, which can only meet just over 51.5 years of global production. Therefore, alternative resources are needed to both supplement and replace fossil oils as the raw material for transportation fuels, chemicals and materials in petroleum-based industries. Renewable biomass is a likely candidate, because it is prevalent over the Earth and is readily converted to other products. Compared with coal, some of the advantages of biomass are: (i) its carbon-neutral and sustainable nature when properly managed; (ii) its reactivity in biological conversion processes; (iii) its potential to produce bio-oil  (ca. yields of  75%) by fast pyrolysis because of its high oxygen content; (iv) its low sulfur and lack of undesirable contaminants (e.g. metals, nitrogen content)  (v) its wide geographical distribution and (vi) its potential for creating jobs and industries in  energy crop productions and conversion plants. Many researchers, governments, research institutions and industries are developing projects for converting biomass including forest woody and herbaceous biomass into chemicals, biofuels and materials and the race is on for creating new “biorefinery” processes needed for future economies. The development of biorefineries will create remarkable opportunities for the forestry sector, biotechnology, materials, chemical processing industry, and stimulate advances in agriculture. The Biofuels and Biorefineries Series strives to highlight methods and technologies that will help industries to shift to renewable and carbon-neutral resources which will lead to the creation of sustainable society.

Electronic ISSN
2214-1545
Print ISSN
2214-1537
Series Editor
  • Zhen Fang

Book titles in this series

Abstracted and indexed in

  1. Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series