Resource detail

Due to increasing population and industrialization, the demand of energy is increasing day by day. Simultaneously, the worldwide bio-ethanol production is increasing constantly. The maize, sugarcane and sugar beets are major traditional agricultural crops used as bio-ethanol production but these crops are unable to meet the global demand of bio-ethanol production due to their primary value of food and feed. Hence, cellulosic materials such as agro-residues are attractive feedstock for bio-ethanol produc-tion. The cellulosic material is the most abundant biomass and agro-residues on the earth. Bio-ethanol from agro-residues could be a promising technology that involves four processes of pre-treatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation and distillation. These processes have several challenges and limitations such as biomass transport and handling, and efficient pre-treatment process for removing the lignin from the lignocellulosic agro-residues. Proper pre-treatment process may increase the concentrations of fermentable sugars after enzymatic hydrolysis, thereby improving the efficiency of the whole process. Others, efficient microbes and genetically modified microbes may also enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis. Conversion of cellulose to ethanol requires some new pre-treatment, enzymatic and fermentation technologies, to make the whole process cost effective. In this review, we have discussed about current technologies for sustainable bioethanol production from agro-residues.