Biorefineries : Targeting Energy, High Value Products and Waste Valorisation

This book addresses the potential of the transformation of biomass into a wide range of marketable products, and examines the biological, biochemical, physical and thermal processing of biomass into products such as fuels, power, heat, feeds, chemicals and materials. Respective chapters explore various topics including biomass characterization, biomass pre-conditioning and sustainability analysis, aspects that are supplemented by a global overview of their implementation in current pilot bio-refineries. Providing a valuable resource to energy engineers, chemical engineers, biotechnologists and economists, this book will also be of great interest to students and policymakers.

Mário Costa is a Full Professor in the area of Environment and Energy at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). He graduated in Chemical Engineering at University of Coimbra in 1984, obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London in 1992 and his Habilitation in Mechanical Engineering at Technical University of Lisbon in 2009. Currently, he teaches the courses of Thermodynamics, Combustion, Renewables Energies and Integrated Energy Systems. He has supervised more than 100 MSc and Phd students. He has participated in more than 50 national and international projects in the area of Energy and Environment and has (co-)authored 1 book, more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and more than 150 papers in international conferences. He was the recipient of the Caleb Brett Award of the Institute of Energy in 1991, of the Sugden Award of the British Section of the Combustion Institute in 1991, of the Prémio Científico UTL/Santander Totta in 2010 and of a Menção Honrosa Universidade de Lisboa/Santander in 2016

Dr. Carla Silva received the Mechanical Engineering degree (five year course) in 2000 and the PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2005, at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, Portugal. She went for a post doc at both IST and University of Michigan working on CO2 mitigation in road vehicles. She was a senior researcher at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering IDMEC since 2008 to 2015. She is now assistant professor at the Department of Geographic, Geophysics and Energy Engineering at Faculdade de Ciências. She teaches, in the integrated master of Energy and Environment Engineering, the courses of Sustainable Mobility, Bioenergy, Combustion Technologies, Life cycle assessement and Electrical circuits. She has supervised 40 MSc and 7 Phd students. She has 1 book, 2 book chapters, 50 papers in international peer-reviewed journals (h=19 google scholar) and more than 50 papers in international conferences. She is an active reviewer (https://publons.com/author/570077/carla-silva#stats ).  Has been awarded with 7 prizes, including the best mechanical engineering internship and the 3M prize for innovation.  Areas of interest are new fuels; biomass; alternative road vehicle simulation; energy and environment impacts; life cycle assessment, indicators for sustainable mobility.

Ana Ferreira is a Post-doctoral in the area of Environment and Energy at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). She graduated and obtained her master degree in Chemistry, in the environmental area of analysis of atmospheric aerosols and atmospheric exposure, at Faculty of Science of University of Lisbon in 2005 and 2008, respectively. In 2013 completed her PhD in Environmental Engineering at IST of University of Lisbon. Currently she is a Post-doctoral researcher at Institute of Mechanical Engineering of IST, on alternative biomass and biofuels. She has more than 11 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 1 book chapter and more than 28 papers in international conferences. She has participated in more than 5 national and international projects, including a Cost Action, in the area of Environment and Energy. She has been awarded third place in YEAR 2012 – The Young European Arena of Research during the Transportation Research Arena (TRA2012) in Athens, in 2012. Areas of interest are biomass, biomass conversion (e.g. combustion and pyrolysis), pollutant emissions, biofuels, energy and environment and life cycle assessment

Miriam Rabaçal is a Post-Doc researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisboa, Portugal, and was a collaborator of the IDMEC/IST research institute from 2010 until she became an integrated member in 2016. She received a M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from IST in 2010. During her master thesis project, she held an Initiation to Research grant while working on small-scale biomass pellets combustion. After a four months’ internship in Karunya University, Coimbatore, India, she returned to IST to pursue her PhD studies supported a FCT PhD grant on Large Eddy Simulations of coal and biomass combustion. During her PhD studies, she spent six months in Imperial College London, 18 months in Duisburg Essen University and three months in TUB Freiberg for collaborative research on her PhD topic. She received her PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2016. She participated in more than five international and national research projects in the areas of High Performance Computing, Combustion and Energy. She has nine papers in international peer-reviewed journals, one book chpater and 24 communications in international scientific meetings.