Economics and environmental impact of bioethanol production technologies: an appraisal

• DOI: 10.5897/bmbr2007.0002
• Publication Date: 2007-02-28
• Authors: Anuj Kumar; Chan Es; Ravinder Rudravaram; M. Lakshmi Narasu; L. Venkateswar Rao; Pogaku Ravindra
• Keywords: Lignocellulosic Biomass

Contemporary industrial developments and rapid pace of urbanization have called for an environmentally sustainable energy sources. Ethanol made from biomass provides unique environmental, economic strategic benefits can be considered as a safe cleanest liquid fuel alternative to fossil fuels. There is copious amount lignocellulosic worldwide that exploited ethanol production. Significant advances been at bench scale towards the generation lignocellulosics. However there are still technical economical hurdles, which make bioethanol program unsuccessful commercial scale. This review broad overview on current status production technologies in terms their environmental viability. These include pretreatment biomass, use cellulolytic enzymes depolymerisation carbohydrate polymers into fermentable constituents robust fermentative microorganisms Among all available technologies, dilute acid hydrolysis followed by enzymatic less expensive more efficient cellulases has found promising potential economics impact.

Key words: Bioethanol, feedstock, fermentation, economics, impact