Waste to liquid fuels: potency, progress and challenges

Abstract Fossil fuel depletion and waste management have emerged as the largest challenge faced by today's world. This has led to substantial damage to biodiversity in the form of extinction of certain vulnerable species to pollution. On the other hand, the depletion of fossil reserves poses threat to the energy security of world. Thus the most favorable and cerebral decision is to convert the waste into potential liquid fuels that have a positive impact on global energy security. This chapter deals with the various processing technologies that are being currently under the focus of interest for the production of fuels from waste sources. The potential of different kinds of man-made wastes such as plastics, rubber, and organic wastes to replace conventional fossil based fuels have been discussed. A variety of biochemical and thermochemical processes along with the positive effects of catalyst added to the product yield with emphasis on the latest developments have been studied. The fundamental knowledge on the principle of their working and its applications to the different feedstock has also been given in detail.