Toward the Valorization of Waste and Biomass

Valorization is the conversion of waste and biomass to energy, fuels and other useful materials, with particular focus on environmental indicators and sustainability goals. It is part of the larger endeavor of loop-closing. This topic is the object of cooperation between a large number of actors from various fields of engineering sciences, health and safety. In this paper, the relevance and the interest in this topic is discussed and supported with examples. The two examples proposed concern biomass and plastic films. Biomass has gained a tremendous interest during the ten last years and will be a subject for significant research progress in the future. The evolution of research in the production of biofuels from first, second and third generation biomass is discussed using thermal process. The second example concerns plastic films; valorization of plastics has been investigated for two decades already with relevant progress. However, this paper shows that there are still a number of issues to tackle and overcome for an efficient and effective valorization of plastic films. To improve and reach a significant valorization, integrated processes for proper separation, detection and classification of plastic film from industrial and commercial packaging waste are discussed. The paper also highlights the bottlenecks, barriers and challenging issues such as the emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases, energy efficiency, modeling, characterization, regulation and policy that will drive the development of this field in the future.