ABSTRACT
Ragauskas et al. [1] stated that a modern biorenery, by denition, parallels a petroleum renery. Raw material is brought to the renery and processed, and a multitude of highand low-value products, by-products, and co-products exit the plant to be distributed to a large number of users. However, unlike petroleum reneries which use only one type of raw material (petroleum), a biorenery will most likely have multiple types of renewable feedstocks entering the process at a given time. Because of their variable characteristics (moisture, chemical composition, energy content, physical size, etc.), these feedstocks must be preprocessed before they are introduced into the main manufacturing facility. This preparation can take many forms, but two activities are most common. The rst is moisture removal. For the most part, feedstock moisture does not participate in reactions within a biorenery, but has to be removed in one way or another (e.g., evaporation or pumping out to a treatment plant). Within the system, large quantities of undesired water will increase energy consumption (e.g., in evaporation columns) or decrease process efciency (e.g., in a boiler). In addition, moisture contained within biomass increases transportation costs because it increases biomass weight when transported. The second common preprocessing step, size reduction, is performed to increase the surface area of the feedstock which is exposed to the process, as well as to homogenize the feedstocks for the best
CONTENTS
15.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................433 15.2 Biorenery Feedstocks ......................................................................................................434
