Book description
One of the main challenges facing the chemical industry is the
transition to sustainable operations. Industries are taking initiatives
to reduce resource intensities or footprints, and by adopting safer
materials and processes. Such efforts need to be supported by techniques
that can quantify the broad economic and environmental implications of
industrial operations, retrofi t options and provide new design
alternatives.
This contemporary overview focuses on cradle-to-grave life cycle
assessments of existing or conceptual processes for producing valueadded
fuels, chemicals, and/or materials from renewable agricultural residues,
plant-derived starches and oils, lignocellulosic biomass, and
plant-based industrial processing wastes.
It presents the key concepts, systems, and technologies, with an
emphasis on new feedstocks for the chemical industry. Each chapter uses
common themes of specifi c raw materials, thus forming a natural
progression throughout the book. The result is coverage from a wide
range of perspectives, emphasizing not only the technical issues but
also considering the market place and socio-economic aspects. Roland
Ulber studied chemistry at the University of Hanover, Germany,
graduating in 1994, and where he gained his PhD in 1996 from the
Institute of Technical Chemistry. He received his lecturing qualifi
cation from the same university in 2002, and has been Professor for
Bioengineering at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern since 2004.
He is involved in several national and international research projects
in the area of biorefi neries, and is chairman of the working group on
?Biotechnological Use of Renewable Resources? at the DECHEMA in
Frankfurt. Professor Ulber's main research interest is the use of
renewable resources as feedstock for chemical and biotechnological processes.
A professor at Stuttgart University, Germany, since 2008, Thomas Hirth
studied chemistry at Karlsruhe University with a focus on organic and
technical chemistry, where he gained his doctorate in physical chemistry
in 1992. Since then he has worked at the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft,
initially as department head of environmental engineering at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology, and since 2007 as head of
the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial and Bioprocess Engineering.
With numerous publications to his name, Professor Hirth is a member of
various scientifi c-technical societies, such as the GDCh, DECHEMA and
VDI, chair of several expert committees and a member of the council on
bioeconomy. The main emphasis of his scientifi c work is on the material
use of renewable resources and the development of biorefi nery concepts
for integrating chemical and biotechnological processes.
An extraordinary professor at Leibniz-University Hanover, Germany, since
the beginning of 2010, Dieter Sell studied biology with a focus on
biochemistry at Ruhruniversitat Bochum. He gained his doctorate in 1991
at the institute of chemical engineering of Dortmund University, and his
lecturing qualification in 2004 from the University of Hanover in
technical chemistry. From 1991 onwards he developed the bioprocess
engineering working group at the Karl Winnacker Institute of DECHEMA,
which he has led until 2006. This group is involved in
bioelectrochemical systems, the production of bioproducts and in
ecoefficiency analyses. Also, since that same year Professor Sell was
head of the biotechnology department at DECHEMA, and an active member of
national and international committees working on the use of renewable
resources in industrial biotechnology. With the beginning of 2011 he
took over the management of ThEGA, the Thuringian Energy- and GreenTech
Agency located in Erfurt, Germany.
