“Distilling” the Issues of Biorefinery Deployment

This paper will review basic issues in deployment of biorefineries. The outline of the paper is as follows:

I. The “old-fashioned” refinery A. Define “refinery” B. Refineries in the petroleum sector C. Traditional refinery technologies and economics

II. Adapting the refinery concept to biomass feedstocks A. Drivers of biorefining and biorefinery “enablers” (including environment, economics, policy, subsidies, etc.) B. Biorefinery concept C. Biorefinery feasibility i. Technical ii. Economic

III. Practical applications of biorefineries A. Who may deploy B. What may it look like C. Where may it be deployed D. When could it realistically happen E. Why will deployment happen F. How can the concept come to fruition - decision-making, financing, & deployment