Zero Waste Biorefinery: A Comprehensive Outlook

With the advancement in urbanization and industrialization, there’s sharp resource exhaustion along with instability in the global economy. Currently, most of the economies and industries follow a take-make-disposal pattern of production and consumption. This linear pattern magnifies the constraints on the availability of the resources and subsequently leads to hiked prices, unsustainable overuse, and economic volatility. Considering the circumstances, developed and developing nations are in lust after new, sustainable and carbon-free economic models to make the planet liveable. In pursuit of feasible advancements, the scientific community has already started exploring approaches to re-use or re-cycle different components across the production-consumption succession and put back the residue into the cycle of product generation, commonly conceptualized as a zero waste biorefinery. The researcher's expertise in this domain emphasis integrating the bioeconomy into a closed and re-circulating loop system to compensate for the burgeoning demands of humans. Biomass wastes from various industrial and agricultural operations have pushed the shortcomings into circular bioeconomy that not only adds auxiliary value but articulate social and environmental concerns as well. Henceforth, the present chapter provides a comprehensive outlook on various aspects of zero waste bio-refinery as a sustainable technology to process lignocellulosic wastes, algal waste, and residues into value-added products.