Biorefinery

A biorefinery is a facility or process that incorporates biomass conversion strategies and technologies to develop fuel, energy and chemicals in a manner similar to the petroleum refinery industry. Oil, or petroleum, refinery, is a well-known environmentally toxic industry. “Crude oil” is the target compound for conversion by this industry and is extracted from natural underground reservoirs before being heavily processed. Crude oil itself is a low-value product and so the aim of petroleum refinery is to convert this commodity into multiple high-value products for the energy, fuel, and chemical markets. This chapter will discuss how the principles on which petroleum refineries are based have been translated for the use of other natural biomasses for biorefinery. The difference between an oil refinery and a biorefinery is the use of resources such as forestry, plants, and algae as the starting biomass (instead of crude oil) in the latter, and the sustainable conversion of this material to produce safe and ideally circular products like food, feed, fertilizer, and fuel. The basis of biorefinery can be applied to broader industries in this way, such as the food and feed industries, simply by accounting for all side streams and by-products, ensuring they are part of a zero-waste process.