Biomass as a potential source of sustainable fuel, chemical and tribological materials – Overview

Abstract

Pollution is regarded as one of the global biggest challenges towards sustainability of mankind. Studies have discovered that high percentage of these pollutants are from industrial by-product source, mostly from combustion of fuels during manufacturing and other applications. The introduction and acceptance of smother burning fuels together with less harmful chemical (lubricants) began to gain ground, owing to the worldwide environmental concern. This drastically pushes into utilization of bio-materials known with potential of cellulose, phospholipid, triglycerides, hemicellulose and lignin that discovered to have similar properties with fossil, also renewable and eco-friendly, to substitute products of fossil feedstock. Apart from those listed potentials, biomass materials of high carbonaceous feature, gives suitable nanotubes characteristics including high young's modulus and amphipathic behavior, therefore could serve as additive towards enhancement of tribological properties of lubricant. Furthermore, the utilization of biomass materials in the industry, hopefully will alter the continuous increase in Price and demand in petroleum products, also the environmental catastrophe from petroleum products will be minimize. This paper looks into the potentials of biomass in the areas of combustion and tribological applications. With the modern technologies in the industry for biomass conversion, better products of oils, chemicals and gases certainly will be generated. Continuous utilization of biomass, evidently will eliminate the global greenhouse emission and other combustible by-product challenges.