ABSTRACT
Fossil fuels have remained the most exploited energy sources in the current century to cater to the growing energy and chemical demands. The excessive exploitation of fossil fuels has caused severe damages to the environment due to greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, significant efforts in energy and chemical research are being directed towards the utilization of biomass as a sustainable source to replace the fossil fuels and petrochemicals. However, creating entirely new biorefining infrastructures for biomass conversion technologies is a challenging task and may incur a considerable cost to the investors and stakeholders, thereby making it an economically non-feasible approach. Moreover, biomass alone may not be available in sufficient quantities to fulfill all energy and chemical demands unless there is a continual cultivation and supply of energy crops, which in turn may lead to ecological imbalance. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to partially utilize the biomass resources in the existing petrochemical refineries along with fossil fuels through the concept of co-processing. Although co-processing of fossil fuels and biomass is a young and emerging concept, it has already been tested and shown promising results in various conventional systems. This chapter discusses some promising co-processing technologies such as co-firing, co-combustion, co-pyrolysis, co-liquefaction, and co-gasification that utilize both biomass and fossil fuels to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions and save the costs of establishing new biorefineries.
