Towards a unified carbon accounting landscape.

The overarching purpose of carbon accounting is to reduce carbon emissions to meet net-zero targets and minimize the impact of climate change. However, the plethora of methods and approaches used means that products and systems sometimes cannot easily be compared. The mix of regional and life cycle-based systems can mean that we lack global oversight of our emissions and impact.

Production of volatile fatty acids by anaerobic digestion of biowastes: Techno-economic and life cycle assessments.

Production of volatile fatty acids from food waste and lignocellulosic materials has potential to avoid emissions from their production from petrochemicals and provide valuable feedstocks. Techno-economic and life cycle assessments of using food waste and grass to produce volatile fatty acids through anaerobic digestion have been conducted. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for both assessments were done to enable a robust forecast of key-aspects of the technology deployment at industrial scale.

Fast spectroscopic monitoring of inhibitors in the 2G ethanol process.

One of the main challenges of second generation (2G) ethanol production is the high quantities of phenolic compounds and furan derivatives generated in the pretreatment of the lignocellulosic biomass, which inhibit the enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation steps. Fast monitoring of these inhibitory compounds could provide better control of the pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation processes by enabling the implementation of strategic process control actions. We investigated the feasibility of monitoring these inhibitory compounds by ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy associated with partial least squares (PLS) regression.

Monitoring of the cellulosic ethanol fermentation process by near-infrared spectroscopy.

Rapid, efficient, and low-cost technologies for monitoring the fermentation process during second generation (2G) or cellulosic ethanol production are essential for the successful implementation of this process at the commercial scale. Here, the use of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy associated with partial least squares (PLS) regression was investigated as a tool for monitoring the production of 2G ethanol from lignocellulosic sugarcane residues including bagasse, straw, and tops. The spectral data was based on a set of 103 alcoholic fermentation samples.