Biomass Processing via Thermochemical–Biological Hybrid Processes

Biomass is one of the most interesting sources of organic carbon that can be used for obtaining renewable chemicals. This chapter focuses on the potential offered by a combination of two approaches, which are often considered as an alternative or sometimes even competing: thermochemical processing and biological processing. Understanding of hybrid thermochemical–biological processes requires a steep change in the view of pyrolysis processes. Because most of pyrolysis studies aim to directly obtain a fuel, Pyrolysis Products (PyP) are usually characterized in terms of average fuel proprieties, neglecting details on molecular structures. Microbial Mixed Consortia (MMC) conversions of PyP is something relatively new; thus, some data were back-calculated from experimental results to provide a general indication of the maximum yields and rates obtainable from biological conversions of pyrolysis products with MMC. The metabolic potential of a MMC system can address the conversion of the complex mixture produced by pyrolysis.