Biofuel and co-products

This section will provide and overview of the issues surrounding the application of biorefining biomass feedstocks within the food and drink sectors. Biofuels will have an impact on how we account for food miles and carbon dioxide emissions within the food and drink sectors.
This area of work is of significant interest because biomass could supplement and replace elements of the fossil fuel economy. Many of the technologies used in obtaining energy from biomass are not new; syn-gas or town gas was used to develop a range of chemical feedstocks in the 19th and 20th Centuries and biomass has been used as a fuel for many centuries. However, changes in waste regulation and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are drivers for the development of technologies that can obtain energy from crop biomass, waste biomass and manufacturing co-products using fermentation, gasification or combustion. New biotechnologies are also providing methodologies for the fermentation of non-food biomass into biofuels. These processes are termed second generation biofuel processes and aim to utilise cellulose (not starch) as a feedstock. Second generation biofuels are also produced in biorefineries where several products including polymers, fibres, heat, power and fuel can be obtained from single feedstocks.