Biological Pretreatment of Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) for Biofuel Production-A Review

Abstract

A monocotyledonous fresh water aquatic plant, water hyacinth (WH) (Eichhornia crassipes) is a source of lignocellulosic material and has the potential to be used as feedstock for biofuel production. WH has high reproduction rate and can create a number of problems including increased evapo-transpiration, act as shelter for disease carrying vectors, cause silting of channels and is responsible for showing the flow of water by 40 to 95% in irrigation channels. Keeping this in mind, the present work was undertaken to utilise this noxious weed for energy production. The utilisation of this weed for biogas production may prove to be highly beneficial, however, it requires pretreatment before conversion to biogas. Pretreatment results in increased solubility ofbiomass and improved biofuel production. For efficient biofuel production, pretreatment is must to-do-step. Out of all pretreatments methods, biological pretreatment, which is an eco-friendly method was chosen for WH prior to biofuel production. This paper represents the biological pretreatment of WH for its applications in biofuel production.