Elsevier

Environmental Pollution

Volume 269, 15 January 2021, 116149
Environmental Pollution

Review
A state-of-the-art review of biowaste biorefinery

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.116149Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Biowaste can be effectively used as a raw material in a biorefinery.

  • Bibliometric analysis is conducted on the biowaste research field.

  • A literature review is performed on three thematic areas in the biowaste field.

  • A comprehensive review of biowaste and biorefinery systems is administered.

  • Anaerobic digestion and biorefinery supply-chain optimization are identified as future works.

Abstract

Biorefineries provide a platform for different industries to produce multiple bio-products enhancing the economic value of the system. The production of these biorefineries has led to an increase in the generation of biowaste. To minimize the risk of environmental pollution, numerous studies have focused on a variety of strategies to mitigate these concerns reflected in the vast amount of literature written on this topic. This paper aims to systematically analyze and review the enormous body of scientific literature in the biowaste and biorefinery field for establishing an understanding and providing a direction for future works. A bibliometric analysis is first performed using the CorTexT Manager platform on a corpus of 1488 articles written on the topic of biowaste. Popular and emerging topics are determined using a terms extraction algorithm. A contingency matrix is then created to study the correlation of scientific journals and key topics from this field. Then, the connection and evolution of these terms were analyzed using network mapping, to determine relationships among key terms and analyze notable trends in this research field. Finally, a critical review of articles was presented across three main categories of biowaste management such as mitigation, sustainable utilization, and cleaner disposal from the perspective of the biorefinery concept. Operational and technological challenges are identified for the integration of anaerobic digestion in biorefineries, especially in developing nations. Moreover, logistical challenges in the biorefinery supply-chain are established based on the economics and collection aspect of handling biowaste.

Introduction

The biorefinery is a recognized conversion platform that converts biomass and its residues to various bioproducts such as bioenergy, biochemicals, biopolymers, and animal feeds (Kumar et al., 2020). The biorefinery concept aims to heighten the economic potential of the production of bioproducts by seeking the opportunity to reuse the by-products through the integration of various conversion technologies (Sy et al., 2018). Using a life-cycle perspective, certain low-energy intensive processes can potentially result in net negative carbon emissions in a biorefinery supply-chain (Ubando et al., 2019). Furthermore, employing the circular economy framework in biorefineries has shown a sustainable production of various bioproducts through waste biorefineries (Ubando et al., 2020). Biowaste from biorefineries can be reused for the valorization of the system (Selva, 2020). Thus, biowaste biorefineries have emerged as a sustainable approach towards circular bioeconomy (Alibardi et al., 2020; Ubando et al., 2020). It is important to analyze the recent review studies which dealt with biowaste and biorefineries to elucidate on the current technologies and future perspectives.

To further understand the dynamics of biowaste in a biorefinery, the technologies involved in a biowaste biorefinery must be analyzed and reviewed. The following studies conducted a literature review on various configurations of biowaste biorefineries tallied conventional and advanced processes for the valorization of the bioproducts. De Buck et al. (2020) reviewed the numerous biowaste biorefinery models as well as their supply chain networks and categorized the models based on the types of conversion technology utilized. Zhen et al. (2019) extensively reviewed the numerous design of the anaerobic membrane bioreactor for chemical energy harvest in a biowaste biorefinery and underlined its advancement, challenges in fouling, and future directions. Vea et al. (2018) analyzed twenty-five waste management decision support tools, and evaluated their performance towards the management of circular biowaste in the biorefinery perspective. Nisticò (2017) reviewed the valorization of the shellfish industry through the utilization of its biowaste to develop biopolymers. Capson-Tojo et al. (2016) conducted a state-of-the-art review of anaerobic processes to transform food waste into volatile fatty acids, biomethane, and biohydrogen. Mahro and Timm (2007) reviewed various technologies in a biorefinery to convert food wastes to various high-valued bioproducts such as animal feeds, bioenergy, biomaterials, and biochemicals. In summary, certain technologies have been employed for various applications of biowaste for its mitigation, sustainable utilization, and cleaner disposal. Review works on the mitigation, utilization, and disposal of biowaste in a biorefinery perspective are outlined to magnify on the research gaps. For mitigation, Diacono and Montemurro (2010) performed a review of the effects of organic adaptation for the avoidance of the chemical fertilizers and employment of organic matter replenishment under a 60-year timeframe. However, there is a lack of review work on the mitigation of biowaste.

Strategies on utilizing biowaste in a biorefinery perspective have been reported. Breitenmoser et al. (2019) reviewed various uses of anaerobic digestion for biowaste treatment in municipal solid waste management and the simultaneous production of organic fertilizer for agriculture in India. Daniel-Gromke et al. (2018) conducted a comprehensive review of the current plant configuration which included biowaste digestion plants for biogas and biomethane production in Germany. Lü et al. (2018) reviewed the conventional and advanced methods in the evaluation of the bio-stability of biowaste-derived residues. The advanced methods in the examination of the bio-stability are thermochemolysis, thermogravimetric, and spectroscopic analysis. Wijesekara et al. (2016) highlighted the significance of biowaste to rehabilitate mine spoil and outlined different case studies with its rehabilitation efficacy. Huttunen et al. (2014) extensively reviewed various life-cycle assessments of biogas production plants in Finland and compared them with the preferences of local biogas plants through qualitative interviews of stakeholders. Patel et al. (2012) reviewed and summarized various applications of biowaste to enhance the metabolic activities of bacteria to further improve hydrogen production. Van Wyk (2001) reviewed numerous conversion pathways of the bioproduct development from biowaste and highlighted the importance of reuse of biowaste for sustainable production and consumption. Most of these studies utilized biowaste for the generation of various biofuels such as biomethane, biogas, and biohydrogen. These works are significant in expanding the review of literature on specific technologies used in biowaste biorefinery. However, it did not cover a bibliometric analysis of biowaste.

Opportunities in the disposal of biowaste emerged to have significance in the biorefinery perspective. The different review studies on biowaste disposal are as follows. Mensah-Darkwa et al. (2019) underlined the importance of biowaste in the development of a supercapacitor energy storage device and reviewed its electrochemical performances and different storage mechanisms. Wong et al. (2018) summarized different technological advancements and outlined the challenges in the synthesis of activated carbon from biowaste in wastewater treatment. Lohri et al. (2017) reviewed 13 treatment technologies for biowaste value-creation with emphasis on the marginal to middle-income settings and outlined the trends and challenges. Scoma et al. (2016) comprehensively reviewed the major biowaste from South Europe and identified key chemical platforms which can be converted to high-valued bioproducts. Kumar et al. (2014) performed a review on different conversion routes of biowaste from biodiesel production such as glycerol to simultaneously generate bioenergy and biopolymers. Noble et al. (2009) reviewed the evidence of the effects of the interaction of temperature and time in the plant pests and pathogens from plant-based waste and summarized the measures to mitigate plant health risks. These review works have shown that a wide variety of opportunities are uncovered on the disposal of biowaste and its potential use. However, it is only limited to the disposal aspect of biowaste and has not covered the mitigation and utilization of biowaste.

No review work was found to have comprehensively reviewed the biowaste in terms of its mitigation, utilization, and disposal from various industries and how the biorefinery concept can aid in the valorization of these various industries. With the recent interest of the research community and the industry to adopt a circular economy framework, publications in the “biowaste” AND “biorefinery” fields have increased. To address this gap, this work aims to provide a systematic review of the field of “biowaste” from the perspective of biorefinery by following the steps shown in Fig. 1. Firstly, a bibliometric analysis was performed which utilized the keyword “biowaste” in Web of Science (WoS) search where the results are discussed in the next section. Secondly, a thematic review based on the three main areas identified in the Special Issue of the Environmental Pollution which focuses on “mitigation”, “utilization”, and “disposal” of “biowaste” which is discussed in section 3. Lastly, the comprehensive review are synthesized works which focused on the WoS keyword search “biowaste” AND “biorefinery” that are clustered in terms of various applications such as energy, industrial/commercial, agricultural, process optimization, and environmental assessment. The comprehensive review is discussed in section 4. With the proposed systematic approach of the state-of-the-art review on biowaste biorefinery, insights on its challenges and future perspective are identified. The study aims to establish the research trends in biowaste and biorefinery and identify critical areas of research in the future. The review procedure presented in this work comprises the state-of-the-art review on the biowaste biorefinery which was not discussed in previous review articles found in the literature.

Section snippets

Bibliometric analysis

Bibliometric analysis is the study of the dynamic evolution of scientific literature on a specific field to determine the relationships of key areas of research in the field and capture emerging trends. Only a couple of articles in the Environmental Pollution journal has utilized bibliometric analysis for reviewing the literature, both published in the previous year (2019). The first paper applied the methodology to determine the temporal evolution of research areas in the field of risk

Thematic review on biowaste management

A thematic review of publications from the examined corpus is then presented to better gain an understanding of the different thematic areas in biowaste management, namely, (1) mitigation, (2) sustainable utilization, and (3) cleaner disposal. The extraction of papers reviewed was done as follows. First, a subset of the original corpus on “biowaste” corresponding to biowaste management was obtained by refining the search keywords to “biowaste AND (mitigation OR utilization OR disposal)”. The

A comprehensive review of biorefinery systems

A focus was then placed on the perspective of biorefinery systems, which is an emerging area of study in terms of sustainable waste management and valorization. The research clusters for the comprehensive review of biowaste and biorefinery are shown in Fig. 7 which are categorized as applications in energy, industrial/commercial, agricultural, process optimization, and environmental assessment.

To gather the research papers written on the subject, a word search containing the query “biowaste AND

Challenges and future perspectives

In light of the discussion on the review studies mentioned above, the following challenges in the research field were identified and categorized based on the bibliometric analysis trends, anaerobic digestion, and biorefinery supply-chain.

Conclusions

A state-of-the-art review has been performed on the field of biowaste with identified subsets in biorefinery, and thematic areas of mitigation, sustainable utilization, and cleaner disposal. Most of the biowaste impact mitigation has focused on two areas which are established as toxic material mitigation and emission reduction. In order to achieve sustainable utilization of biowaste, different applications have been identified such as the production of high-valued bioproducts, energy recovery,

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C., under contracts MOST 106-2923-E-006-002-MY3, MOST 109-2221-E-006-040-MY3, and MOST 109-3116-F-006-016-CC1 for this research. This research was also supported in part by Higher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education to the Headquarters of University Advancement at National Chen Kung University (NCKU).

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