An Economic and Sustainable Method of Bio-Ethanol Production from Agro-Waste: A Waste to Energy Approach

Abstract

Rapidly increasing population and industrialization have led to a tremendous increase in energy consumption. This necessitates the exploration of sustainable and renewable methods of energy production to meet the increasing demand. Lignocellulosic agro-waste materials such as food processing and crop waste are attractive alternatives as raw materials for bioethanol production to meet the global market demand. Utilising these waste materials are also important from an economic and environmental perspective due to the low cost and the large availability of these cellulosic materials on the earth. Utilising agro-waste to produce bioethanol will also reduce the hazardous effects of phenolic compounds. The process broadly involves four significant steps: pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and product recovery. However, there are several challenges and limitations at every step, such as agro-waste handling, transportation and removal of lignin & lignocellulose during the pretreatment, which increases the concentration of sugars used during enzymatic hydrolysis. Conversion of large chain polymers such as cellulose and hemicellulose into fermentable monomers is also a major challenge during enzymatic hydrolysis. Thus, developing an efficient strain for fermentation is essential to increase the production capacity. This chapter discusses the latest and cost-effective processes to produce bioethanol using agro-waste as raw materials. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.