Hydrocarbon fuels from lignocellulose

Abstract

The main motivation for biofuels at present is to enable transportation fuels which do not contribute to global warming. Biofuels made from non-food biomass, collectively called lignocellulose, dramatically reduce the net carbon dioxide emissions from light and heavy duty vehicles. Lignocellulose consists of agricultural residue such as corn stover and sugarcane bagasse, waste from forest trimming, and energy crops such as switchgrass and short rotation poplar trees grown on marginally arable land with little irrigation or fertilizer. In this chapter, catalytic and microbial routes for the conversion of lignocelluose into hydrocarbon biofuels will be reviewed, and the latest status of commercial development of the various routes will be reported. The biomass conversion routes and the order of the chapter is as follows: biomass gasification, pyrolysis, aqueous phase processing with inorganic catalysts and microbes, and biogas production via anaerobic digestion. There has not yet evolved a single dominant strategy for biomass conversion into fuel.