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Sources and operations of waste biorefineries 113

transfer locales are a consistent wellspring of different well-beings and natural
issues, for example, skin and eyes contaminations, respiratory issues, infections
such as malaria, typhoid, hepatitis, loose bowels, and cholera, diarrhea, and high
blood levels alongside harming of toxic heavy metals just as air, soil, and water
contamination including GHGs and other dangerous gases outflows (Brunner and
Rechberger, 2015).

5.3 Waste biorefinery—concept and classification

A biorefinery is the incorporated upstream, downstream, and midstream handling of
biomass into a scope of products. Biorefinery can utilize a wide range of biomass
from agriculture, forestry, industrial, and municipal residues such as wood, aquacul-
ture, and biomass from aquatics such as seaweeds and algae. A biorefinery is defi-
nitely not an absolutely new idea. A ton of customary biomass-transforming
methodologies, for example, those utilized in the sugar, and pulp and paper industry
were considered biorefineries. A few monetary and ecological drivers, for example,
conservation of energy, global warming, farming arrangements, have likewise guided
those sectors to additionally enhance their tasks in a biorefinery way. Biorefineries
are required to enhance the intensity and economic welfare of the nations by reacting
to the requirement for providing a wide scope of bio-based items and energy in an
environmentally, economically, and socially manageable way. Biorefineries demon-
strate guarantee in both industrialized and developing nations. New abilities, openings
for work, and markets are likewise anticipated (Nizami et al., 2017).
Fundamentally, the idea of a coordinated biorefinery is like an oil refinery,
where oil is refined into numerous attractive items, including synthetic compounds,
fuels, and energy. However, the fundamental distinction is that biorefineries depend
on the utilization of inexhaustible materials as a raw material or feedstock, in par-
ticular, biomatter, while the oil refineries depend on the utilization of nonrenewable
materials, for example, fossil fuels. The term biorefinery is obtained from the crude
material feedstock that is inexhaustible biomass and furthermore from the transfor-
mation processes connected in the treatment and preparing of the crude materials.
The biorefinery concept includes multistep forms in which the initial step, followed
by feedstock determination, includes the biomass treatment for further processing.
Then, the biomass is exposed to chemical or biological treatments. Biorefineries
ought to be profoundly energy effective and make utilization of zero-waste genera-
tion forms. Fig. 5.1 shows the basic concept of biorefinery.
Comprehensively, biorefineries are divided into conventional or primary biore-
finery and advanced or secondary biorefinery dependent on the transformation
methodologies. The natural type of feedstock such as fuelwood and wood chips is
considered in the primary or conventional biorefinery. The auxiliary or secondary
biorefinery involves the transformation of feedstock into biogas, ethanol, dimethyl
ether, etc. The other types of biorefineries dependent on the transformation technol-
ogies incorporate thermochemical, biochemical, and two-stage concept biorefinery
(Sarma et al., 2016).