Integrated System Approach to Sustainable Development, Bio-fuels and Bio-refineries

The most efficient approach to organize and communicate knowledge between different disciplines and help in innovation and the creation of new knowledge is the system approach. Sustainable Development (SD) is cross-disciplinary by its very nature requiring close collaboration between all engineering specializations as well as other disciplines. Efficient engineering and Environmental Engineering (EE) are important, necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainability. Sustainability requires the use of Renewable Resources (RRs) to satisfy the needs of society especially with regard to renewable Bio-Fuels (BFs). The use of RRs which are edible agriculture products to produce BFs is not a strategic solution because of the negative socio-economical impact of using "food" for "fuel". The most strategically promising rout is the use of wasteful biomass and/or energy crops planted in lands and using water not suitable for agriculture of editable products. BFs are location sensitive and therefore will all co-exist and different technologies for their production will also co-exist due to sensitivity of the technology choice to available capital and market. Modern societies will move from the present matrix of dirty and non-renewable fuels to a matrix of clean and renewable fuels. It is important to realize that societies do not live only on fuels/energy introducing the concept of Integrated Bio-Refineries( IBRs) producing a wide range of Bio-Products (BPs) in addition to BFs and Direct Energy (DE) to achieve overall SD and not only sustainability with respect to fuels. BFs and IBRs based on waste RRs as feedstock do not only produce useful BFs, BPs and DE but also solve environmental problems through this useful utilization of the waste materials.