Читать книгу Handbook of Biomass Valorization for Industrial Applications - Группа авторов - Страница 13

Brajesh Kumar1*, Lovjeet Singh2, Pawan Rekha3 and Pradeep Kumar4

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Srinagar, Hazratbal, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India

² Department of Chemical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

³ Department of Chemistry, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Engineering & Technology, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

With the increasing demands of green and renewable energy sources due to worldwide environmental concern, the valorization of earth-abundant biomass into valuable fuels and chemicals represents an area of tremendous importance in green chemistry. Biomass has potential to be used as a substitute of non-renewable and rapidly depleting fossil fuels. The integration of biomass utilization and photocatalysis appears as a promising technology to obtain higher grade of sustainability in chemical processes. The photocatalytic process is considered among the top green processes because of its feasibility at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. This chapter thus highlights the fundamental concept and basic mechanism of photocatalytic transformation of biomass and biomass-derived chemicals to electricity, hydrogen and fine chemicals. A detailed discussion on the catalyst aspect such as structure activity relationship, band gap tuning and visible light induced activity will be presented. Furthermore, some possible strategies to avoid various challenges in practical applicability of this process are discussed.

Keywords: Renewable energy, biomass, photocatalysts, solar energy, biohydrogen