Waste-Based Volatile Fatty Acids for Fuel and Chemical Production
Mohammed Tahmid, Hyuck Joo Choi, Amanda Lorraine C. Cruz, Daniela Ferreira-Garcia, Ehsan Abbasi, Gerardine G. Botte, Marta C. Hatzell
TL;DR
The paper explores using waste to produce volatile fatty acids (VFAs) for a circular carbon economy, projecting large-scale potential by 2050.
Contribution
The study introduces a novel projection of VFA recovery from waste streams and evaluates their role in a circular carbon economy.
Findings
Waste-derived VFA recovery potential could reach 581 Mt yr–1 by 2050.
Waste VFAs can be distributed across chemicals and energy sectors in a circular economy.
Anaerobic digestion and new technologies enable large-scale waste-to-VFA conversion.
Abstract
Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are versatile intermediates for circular chemical and fuel manufacturing. Current VFA production relies heavily on fossil feedstocks and serves a narrow set of commodity markets. Here, we project VFA demand through 2050 and evaluate the potential to recover VFAs from abundant, widely available waste streams, exploring how waste-derived VFAs can support a broader circular carbon economy by midcentury. We project that the global VFA recovery potential from waste could reach ∼581 Mt yr–1 by 2050, roughly 10 times higher than projected demand in existing markets. Integrating waste-carbon streams with anaerobic digestion infrastructure and emerging VFA production and separation technologies provides a feasible route for large-scale waste-to-VFA conversion. We project that in a 2050 circular scenario, ∼581 Mt yr–1 of waste-derived VFAs can be flexibly distributed…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAnaerobic Digestion and Biogas Production · Carbon Dioxide Capture Technologies · Process Optimization and Integration