ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Chem. Eng.
Sec. Computational Methods in Chemical Engineering
This article is part of the Research TopicThought Leaders in Chemical EngineeringView all articles
The role of chemical engineering in the organic waste-based circular bioeconomy: what has been done and what still needs to be done. A perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In recent years, various institutions around the world have emphasised the need to change the economic paradigm from linear to circular. In this framework, waste - particularly organic waste - has become a source of opportunities for converting a wide range of organic waste types into bioproducts or bioenergy. This strategy gives rise to the concept of a biorefinery: a multi-product facility combining technologies and processes to maximise the potential of organic waste, going beyond the traditional waste treatment plant. In this context, chemical engineering (CE) is the most suitable discipline for studying the bioeconomy based on organic waste. By its very nature, CE is multidisciplinary and flexible, and is based on mass and heat balances. Thus, it has powerful tools with which to address the technical challenges of organic transformation. Furthermore, Life Cycle assessment (LCA) and Techno-Economical Analysis (TEA) should be based on CE. In turn, LCA and TEA are the main tools that different stakeholders use to successfully implement an organic waste-circular bioeconomy. This perspective paper explores how CE has already helped and could help in the future with the development of a bioeconomy based on organic waste, using both classical and newly developed CE principles and techniques.
Keywords: bioproducts, bioenergy, Biorefinery, Circular Bioeconomy, Organic waste, solid-state fermentation
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 19 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sánchez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Antoni Sánchez, antoni.sanchez@uab.cat
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.