Evolving scenarios for biorefineries and the impact on catalysis

• The evolving scenario for future biorefineries is presented.
• Biorefineries for producing olefins from biomass is one of the cases discussed.
• Biorefineries for producing intermediates for chemical production are analyzed.
• An example of integrated solar biorefinery approach is given.
• Status and challenges of catalysis for these future biorefineries are presented.

The model of future biorefineries is changing driven from many motivations, particularly the need of improving sustainability and integration with the chemical production. This conceptual review discusses this change, with focus on the case of integrated chemical biorefineries, and how the new scenarios for a sustainable chemical production require to develop new related models of biorefineries. Two cases are discussed in detail: (i) olefin biorefineries and (ii) biorefineries for sustainable chemical production. In addition, some elements for an integrated solar biorefinery approach are also given. The status of catalysis research to enable the development of these biorefinery models was discussed, together with an analysis of the industrial developments in the field and some elements of assessment of the different routes. The aim was to provide fundamentals to understand how this area is evolving, and thus identify where research effort has to be focused. It was also commented how the simple economic analysis, with boundary limits to plant gate, although important, is not enough to properly identify the future scenarios.

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