Abstract
While at present most energy crops are depriving human feedstock, fermentation of agricultural residues and fast growing water plants possesses a good prospect to become a significant source for bio-fuel; as both substrates are widely available and do not require agricultural areas. Water hyacinth for instance can be cultivated in fresh, brackish or wastewater and owing to its rapid growth and availability. Since owing to its natural abundance it is considered to be an invasive plant in most continents, its utilization and use as a renewable energy source may also contribute for its dilution and control. Agricultural lignocellulosic surplus by-products are also a promising fermentable substrate for bioethanol production, as it decreases both disposal expenses and greenhouse gases emissions. This paper describes a scheme and methodology for transformation of any lignocellulosic biomass into biofuel by simple cost effective operation scheme, integrating an innovative process of mechanochemical activation pre-treatment followed by fermentation of the herbal digest and ethanol production through differential distillation. Under this approach several complex and costly staged of conventional ethanol production scheme may be replaced and by genetic engineering of custom fermenting microorganisms the fermentation process becomes a fully continuous industrial process.
Highlights
Despite the development of new fossil fuels recovery techniques, reducing production costs; ethanol production is increasing, owing to its positive environmental impact and economic benefits
The notion of ethanol advantages over fossil fuels have led to implementation programs in 64 countries, whereas in the USA and Brazil its portion is already greater than 10% (Fig. 1) and in the EU the 10% bar is scheduled to 2020 [www.afdc.energy.gov/data/]
The research consisted of two stages, at the beginning water hyacinth plants from a water plant, cultivation pond (Fig. 3), were processed into homogenous biomass
Summary
Despite the development of new fossil fuels recovery techniques, reducing production costs; ethanol production is increasing, owing to its positive environmental impact and economic benefits. Large-scale expansion of these sources is limited by the feedstock prices The choice of such a feedstock for ethanol production is problematic since the biomass requirements either directly or indirectly compete with food crops for arable land resources. For this reason, production of ethanol from lignocellulosic surplus by-products (e.g. wood residue, sugarcane bagasse, corn fibres, rice straw, cassava waste etc.) has received widespread interest owing to their availability, abundance and relatively low cost [4,5,6]. These of other CAM plants are considered as possible human feed source and once cultivated these marginal lands are no longer marginal, but rather farmlands
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