Comptes Rendus Chimie

Hélène Cattey

Laurent Plasseraud

Organotin(IV) trifluoromethanesulfonate chemistry: isolation and characterization of novel 1,10-phenanthroline-based derivatives

Abhik Ghosh

Jeanet Conradie

Rethinking gold(II) porphyrins: an inherent wave distortion

Haitham Elleuch

Ferid Yaccoubi

Sami Ayari

Fatma Saadi

Novel nucleophilic addition SN2'–SN2' pathway: utilizing phosphonium salts as electrophilic agents for synthesizing new phosphine oxides of Morita–Baylis–Hillman (MBH) adducts

Briséïs Mercadier

Christophe Legein

Mathieu Duttine

Monique Body

Ana Gabriela Porras Gutierrez

Sandrine Leclerc

Oleg Lebedev

Christian  Masquelier

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How mechanochemistry affects the composition and properties of disordered fluorite BaSnF4?

Amal Thebti

Hadda-Imene Ouzari

Studies of axially chiral atropisomers of an indole-substituted phthalonitrile derivative

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Agathe Hubau

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Sylvain Guignot

Daniel Meyer

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Damien Bourgeois

Comptes Rendus. Chimie
Supplementary material to the article available at:
https://doi.org/10.5802/crchim.311
Copper leaching with aqueous foams for the
processing of electronic waste
Emilie Régnier a, Agathe Hubau ,b, Solène Touzé ,b, Sylvain Guignot ,b, Daniel Meyer a,
Olivier Diat ,a and Damien Bourgeois ,∗,a
a Institut de Chimie Séparative de Marcoule, ICSM, CEA, CNRS, ENSCM,
Univ Montpellier, BP 17171, Marcoule, 30207 Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France
b BRGM, F-45060 Orléans, France
E-mail: damien.bourgeois@umontpellier.fr (D. Bourgeois)
Supplementary Figure SI1. Temptative set-up of leaching using foams in columns.
∗Corresponding author.
ISSN (electronic) : 1878-1543 https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/chimie/
2 Emilie Régnier et al.
Supplementary Figure SI2. Evolution of Cu leaching using foams according to the Cu source (foam
prepared using 3 M HCl and 2 mM Brij S10).
Supplementary Figure SI3. Al leaching kinetics upon dissolution of WPCB (5 g of ground WPCB, size
<750 µm, for 60 mL aqueous HCl solution).
Supplementary Table SI1. Leaching yield of Fe upon treatment of ground WPCB with aqueous HCl in
various conditions (5 g of ground WPCB, size <750 µm, for 60 mL aqueous HCl solution)
Conditions HCl concentration (mol·L−1)
3 5
5 h, rt 24% 22%
24 h, rt 25% 26%
5 h, 50 °C 24% 95%

Copper leaching with aqueous foams for the processing of electronic waste

Jonathan Daniel

Ophélie Dal Pra

Eleonore Kurek

Chloé Grazon

Mireille Blanchard-Desce

Dye-based fluorescent organic nanoparticles made from polar and polarizable chromophores for bioimaging purposes: a bottom-up approach

Stéphanie Swiha

Valérie Pichon

Thierry Fournier

Sophie Gil

Nathalie Delaunay

Development of an analytical method for the simultaneous determination of 22 Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in maternal and umbilical cord blood

Comptes Rendus
Chimie
Salah Jellali and Mejdi Jeguirim
Foreword to Special Issue “Valorization of biomass and waste: the path for
sustainability and circular economy promotion”
Volume 27, Special Issue S3 (2024), p. 3-6
Online since: 17 March 2025
Part of Special Issue: Materials and Energy Valorization of Biomass and Waste: The
Path for Sustainability and Circular Economy Promotion
Guest editors: Mejdi Jeguirim (Université de Haute-Alsace, Institut de Sciences des
Matériaux de Mulhouse, France) and Salah Jellali (Sultan Qaboos University, Oman)
https://doi.org/10.5802/crchim.392
This article is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
C EN T R E
MER S ENN E
The Comptes Rendus. Chimie are a member of the
Mersenne Center for open scientific publishing
www.centre-mersenne.org — e-ISSN : 1878-1543
Comptes Rendus. Chimie
2024, Vol. 27, Special issue S3, p. 3-6
https://doi.org/10.5802/crchim.392
Materials and Energy Valorization of Biomass and Waste: The Path for
Sustainability and Circular Economy Promotion
Foreword to Special Issue “Valorization of biomass
and waste: the path for sustainability and circular
economy promotion”
Salah Jellali ,a andMejdi Jeguirim ,∗,b
a Centre for Environmental Studies and Research, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat,
Al-Khoud 123, Oman
b The Institute of Materials Science of Mulhouse (IS2M), University of Haute Alsace,
University of Strasbourg, CNRS, UMR 7361, F-68100 Mulhouse, France
E-mails: s.jelali@squ.edu.om (S. Jellali), mejdi.jeguirim@uha.fr (M. Jeguirim)
Abstract. Biomass and wastes are produced in huge amounts all over the world. Even if they have
high potential to be valorized in various sectors including energy, agriculture, and environment, a
big fraction continues to be considered as a serious burden. This situation is worsened by the global
climate change due to important emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) generated by the consumption
of considerable amounts of fossil fuels and also by the mismanagement of the produced biomass and
wastes. The sustainable valorization of these biomass and wastes for energy recovery, synthesis of
new materials for use in industry, in agriculture, and in environment, will decrease GHG emission,
boost the circular economy, and preserve the environment. The current special issue published in
Comptes Rendus Chimie (CRC) reviews recent advancements in biomass and waste valorization for
the promotion of circular economy and sustainability concepts.
Keywords. Solid wastes, Management, Biomaterials, Adsorbents, Catalysts, Energy recovery and stor-
age.
Manuscript received and accepted 5 March 2025.
1. Introduction
Consumption of resources and production are con-
tinuously increasing in the world. This is mainly
caused by the high rate of population growth, ur-
banization, and industrialization. This has ultimately
induced the production of huge amounts of waste.
Waste can be liquid or solid. Solid wastes are usu-
ally classified according to their source. They in-
clude household waste, institutional waste, indus-
trial waste, medical waste, agricultural waste, and
∗Corresponding author
municipal waste. Biomass is an important part of this
waste. It is defined as renewable organic materials
originating from plants and animals and represents
an important fraction of municipal solid wastes.
According to the latest report of the United Na-
tions Environment Program (UNEP 2024), municipal
solid waste produced globally was evaluated to 2.1
billion tons. This amount will reach more than 3.7
billion tons by 2050. In 2020, only 13% of this amount
was valorized for energetic purposes. In develop-
ing countries, direct incineration and landfilling are
generally used for the management of wastes, which
result in negative effects onto the environment and
human health. The same report of UNEP indicates
ISSN (electronic): 1878-1543 https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/chimie/
4 Salah Jellali and Mejdi Jeguirim
that, in comparison with 2020 and for a waste man-
agement scenario as usual, by 2050 there will be a
91% increase in GHG emission, a 84% increase in loss
of natural species, and a 87% increase in negative im-
pact on human health.
Valorization of waste, and particularly biomass
has become a promising alternative option to incin-
eration and landfilling. Waste valorization consists in
the application of the 4Rs principle: Reduce, Recy-
cle, Reuse, and Recovery. The last option permits the
conversion of wastes into valuable materials that can
be used in various sectors such as energy, agriculture,
and environment. Indeed, renewable energy can be
recovered from this waste through various mastered
technologies including anaerobic digestion, gasifica-
tion, and pyrolysis. This energy can partially replace
the one generated from fossil fuel combustion and
consequently reduces atmospheric pollution as well
as GHG emission. This will in turn facilitate the tran-
sition to sustainable energy that is regarded as a fo-
cal point in the United Nations Sustainable Develop-
ment Goals and also the Paris Agreement on climate
change. Besides renewable energy production sys-
tems, an intensive research work is being deployed
for its tailored storage. In this context, the synthe-
sis of specific materials is considered an important
challenge to advance the transition to sustainable
and renewable energy. Moreover, new valuable ma-
terials can be also derived from this waste. For in-
stance, organic wastes may be transformed into an
eco-friendly compost (through composting technol-
ogy) that can be used instead of synthetic fertilizers
in agriculture. This operation will boost the circu-
lar economy concept and reduces farmers’ expenses.
Besides that, this waste may be converted into a
valuable biochar through the pyrolysis process. This
biochar, in raw or modified form, may be used for
the treatment of industrial/urban wastewater. More-
over, it can be used for nutrient recovery from ac-
tual wastewater for further use in agriculture. These
nutrients-loaded biochars, when used to amend agri-
cultural soils, usually allow soils to improve their
water holding capacity and microbiological activ-
ity. Furthermore, it can act as slow-release fertilizer
which offers cultivated plants the required nutrients
during a long period and at the same time reduces
the pollution risk to the underlying groundwater.
Likewise, using biochar instead of activated carbons
for the treatment of wastewater and in substitution of
synthetic fertilizers promotes the circular economy
and sustainability concepts, reduces GHG emission,
protects the groundwater against pollution, and of-
fers a high economic added value to farmers.
The present special issue in the journal “Comptes
Rendus Chimie”, is entitled: “Valorization of biomass
and waste: the path for sustainability and circu-
lar economy promotion”. It provides an interest-
ing update on the conversion of wastes, in general
and biomass in particular into high added-value
by-products by using advanced and eco-friendly
technologies. These by-products are intended to
contribute to the promotion of circular economy
and sustainability. Moreover, this special issue aims
to fulfill national and international requirements
regarding sustainable development and climate
change adaptation and mitigation.
2. Outcomes
The current special issue contains 12 papers that
have undergone a peer review process by at least two
skilled reviewers. Published papers address several
subtopics, including: (i) direct valorization of waste
in several domains including concrete, cellulose and
biomaterials extraction, (ii) biomass turned into ad-
sorbents for removal of pollutants from wastewa-
ter, (iii) use of catalysts to improve the quality of
biomass conversion by-products, (iv) application of
hydrothermal carbonization as an innovative option
for waste management, and (v) test of new materials
for solar energy storage.
The first part of this special issue addresses the
challenges of waste management, direct reuse, and
the extraction of valuable biomaterials [1–5]. For in-
stance, Chaouch et al. [1] investigated the use of re-
cycled Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) powder as a substi-
tute for conventional PVC resin in the expanded layer
of floorcoverings. They showed that mixing recycled
PVC with PVC resin up to 33% did not affect its me-
chanical characteristics (i.e., break strength, elonga-
tion at rupture, and tear resistance). Moreover, with
finer recycled PVC particles (size lower than 200 µm),
this percentage can be pushed further to 86%. In an-
other study, in order to reduce the cost of air con-
dition in arid areas, Siddique et al. [2] tested the
use of four types of recycled plastics: low-density
polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polyester,
and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), as partial
Salah Jellali and Mejdi Jeguirim 5
sand substitutes in concrete for roofing applications.
Their results show that LDPE exhibited the most sig-
nificant economic and environmental benefits. In
the case of New Delhi, a LDPE percentage of 30%
leads to an annual saving of around 1 $/m2 and a
reduction in carbon emissions of 18 kg/kWh. The
third study, by Ben Ali et al. [3], showed that cellu-
lose can be extracted in an eco-friendly way from
prickly pear seeds. The cellulose extraction yield
was 39.3% by maceration and 23.2% when using
the Soxhlet extraction method. Moreover, charac-
terization of the extracted cellulose showed that it
was exceptionally strong and light, allowing its pos-
sible use for the production of carbon fibers for re-
inforcing composite materials used in the aerospace,
automotive, shipbuilding, and other industries. In
the fourth study, Mestour et al. [4] examined the
optimization of using supercritical CO2 for the ex-
traction of bioactive substances from onion waste.
They reported that the optimal oil extraction yield
(24.4%) was achieved for a pressure, temperature,
particle size, and CO2 mass flowrate of 250 bar,
57 °C, 0.25 mm, and 50 g CO2/min, respectively.
The analysis of the oil produced by gas chromatog-
raphy showed that it contained the four follow-
ing fatty acids: 9,12-octadecadienoic acid, methyl
ester; 9,12-octadecadienoic acid (Z,Z)-, methyl es-
ter; 9-octadecadienoic acid (Z)-, methyl ester; and
hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester. Finally, Deffar
et al. [5] studied the extraction of bioethanol from a
pre-treated water hyacinth biomass, a free-floating
perennial plant. Bioethanol extraction was carried
out through a fermentation process by using a lo-
cally isolated thermophilic consortium in a partially
consolidated bioprocessing process. They showed
that the maximum experimental yield (7.7 g/L) was
achieved at 50 °C, 72 h of fermentation time, and an
inoculum dose of 6.64% (v/v).
The second part of this special issue is about
biomass transformation into valuable by-products
including biochar, bio-oil and biogas [6–12]. In this
context, Jellali et al. [6] synthesized three Mg-, Al-,
and Mg/Al-modified biochars from date palm wastes
and valorized them for the recovery of phosphorus
from aqueous solutions under a wide range of ex-
perimental conditions. Their ultimate aim is to use
the phosphorus-loaded biochar in agriculture as a
slow-release fertilizer. They showed that the biochar
modified using a Mg/Al mixture solution exhibited
the best physico-chemical properties and conse-
quently the highest P recovery efficiency (14.1 mg/g).
Moreover, the P recovery process involved both phys-
ical and chemical mechanisms. They conclude that
the P-loaded Mg/Al-modified biochar has a good po-
tential to be used as an attractive slow-release fertil-
izer instead of the costly commercial ones. In another
study, Alfares et al. [7] examined the valorization of
an abundant plant waste in Iraq: pinecones. They
pyrolyzed different particle sizes (0.26–0.841 mm) of
this waste at numerous temperatures (400–600 °C)
for diverse residence times (30–120 min) and various
heating rates (10–50 °C/min). They showed that the
highest pyrolytic oil yield production (42.1%) was ob-
tained for a particle size of 0.4 mm, a pyrolysis tem-
perature of 500 °C, a residence time of 1 h, and a
heating rate of 30 °C/min. The bio-oil characteriza-
tion indicated that it can be considered as a high en-
ergy fuel since its higher calorific value was evalu-
ated to be around 27.0 MJ/kg. Moreover, the acti-
vation of the corresponding biochar with K2CO3 at
750 °C led to the formation of a highly porous ma-
terial. This activated biochar exhibited a large Cr(VI)
removal capacity under a wide range of experimen-
tal conditions. For their part, Audu et al. [8] stud-
ied the effect of a new catalyst, synthesized by incor-
porating mesoporous iron oxide (FeO) into alumina
(Al2O3), on the quality of the biogas formed from the
pyrolysis of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). They
showed that, in comparison with a blank test, use of
this catalyst at a 5% load decreases oxygen content in
the biogas from 23.3% to 5.3%. Moreover, the pres-
ence of this catalyst significantly improved the con-
tents in H2 and CH4 gases. The highest H2 and CH4
contents were evaluated to 17.1%, and 16.2%, respec-
tively. These yields were obtained for catalyst doses
of 5 and 3%, respectively. In another study, Zheng
et al. [9] synthesized a novel hierarchical calcium-
based catalyst CaO(S) through sol–gel-biotemplate
method using calcium nitrate-ethanol-citric acid as
precursor and rape pollen as biotemplate. Then, they
used it to catalyze oil/methyl acetate/methanol for
no-glycerol biodiesel production. They showed a rel-
atively high yield of no-glycerol biodiesel (96.6%) for
the following optimal parameters: a temperature of
65 °C, a catalyst dosage of 10%, and an oil/methyl
acetate/methanol ratio of 1/1/8. Furthermore, the
regeneration study showed a significant catalytic sta-
bility with a yield of 91.4% after three cycles. Besides
6 Salah Jellali and Mejdi Jeguirim
that, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of biomass
was studied in this special issue [10,11]. In this con-
text, Zhang et al. [10] studied the effect of the HTC
experimental conditions on the yield and quality of
the hydrochars produced from sludge. They showed
that the organic matter and ash content in the sludge
as well as the HTC temperature highly affect the fuel
properties of hydrochars. However, the solid loading
had no significant effect on hydrochar quality but did
affect energy consumption by the HTC process itself.
The former lack of effect was confirmed by Bedoui
et al. [11] when studying the HTC of date pits and
pine nut shells at 250 °C for 1 h. These authors also
showed that the hydrochar with the largest higher
heating value (29.7 MJ/kg) was observed for date pits
and a solid/water ratio of 1:48. Moreover, steam ac-
tivation of the hydrochar for 1 h at 850 °C highly im-
proved its physicochemical properties, especially its
porosity and surface area.
In a last but not least contribution, Sharma et al.
[12], studied the effect on freshwater production of
incorporating sensible heat storage materials (i.e.,
bricks, paper napkins wrapped around the brick,
sand bed) in a triangular solar still. They showed
that adding a sand bed reduced the cost of freshwater
generation by around 43%, and the payback period
by 44%.
Declaration of interests
The authors do not work for, advise, own shares in,
or receive funds from any organization that could
benefit from this article, and have declared no affil-
iations other than their research organizations.
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Guest Editors

Walid Chaouch

Slah Msahli

Recycled PVC content and particle size distribution effects on morphological and mechanical properties of expanded PVC layer for floorcoverings

Not a member yet

Organotin(IV) trifluoromethanesulfonate chemistry: isolation and characterization of novel 1,10-phenanthroline-based derivatives

Rethinking gold(II) porphyrins: an inherent wave distortion

Novel nucleophilic addition S<sub>N</sub>2'–S<sub>N</sub>2' pathway: utilizing phosphonium salts as electrophilic agents for synthesizing new phosphine oxides of Morita–Baylis–Hillman (MBH) adducts

How mechanochemistry affects the composition and properties of disordered fluorite BaSnF<sub>4</sub>?

Studies of axially chiral atropisomers of an indole-substituted phthalonitrile derivative

Copper leaching with aqueous foams for the processing of electronic waste

Dye-based fluorescent organic nanoparticles made from polar and polarizable chromophores for bioimaging purposes: a bottom-up approach

Development of an analytical method for the simultaneous determination of 22 Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in maternal and umbilical cord blood

Guest Editors

Recycled PVC content and particle size distribution effects on morphological and mechanical properties of expanded PVC layer for floorcoverings

2,199

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