11. Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass to Bioenergy: A Review

Increasing global energy demand is being substantially contributed by the bioenergy sector. For the rural communities, bioenergy provides opportunities for social and economic development by improving the waste and other resource management. The contribution of bioenergy proves to be significant in terms of maintaining social, economic as well as environmental health, ensuring energy security. Biomass, when converted to bioenergy, may undergo different suitable processes. Thermochemical conversions are no exception. The process technologies include combustion, torrefaction, pyrolysis, and gasification. All these processes having the common backbone of thermal decomposition are optimized by different factors and yield specific products of different states such as solid, liquid, and gases. The characteristics of generic types of reactors used to carry out such processes are described with their special features, advantages, and disadvantages. Though researches have called for three types of possible biomass for conversion such as lipid, sugar/starch, and lignocellulose in the present chapter, conversion of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock is focused. It has been discussed how the variations in composition of biomass at optimized process flow differ the quality and quantity of potential product yields.