Biomass Generating Ethanol - Study of Agricultural Waste

It has been recognized worldwide that the utilization of an enormous amount of fossil fuel has created various adverse effect on the environment, including acid rain and global warming. Such phenomena could destroy our ecological system and human being. The new development and utilization of biomass energy other than traditional wood energy is even more essential. Currently, the traditional biomass energy accounts for almost 14-15﹪of total world energy consumption. Its combustion provides basic energy requirements for cooking and heating of rural households and for processing in a variety of traditional industries in developing countries. In recent years there has been increasing public debate on the treatment methods of agricultural waste on the environment. One major concern of the debate is the reuse of agriculture waste to produce biomass energy by microbial fermentation. Agricultural waste included agricultural disposal and agricultural material disposal including cellulose, lignin, and so on. We generally treat these waste is to bury in a dunghill or to burn them as fertilizer. However, these methods will cause quadratic environmental pollution. If agriculture waste can be transform to biomass energy, it not only solves the environmental pollution, but also is available for energy utilization. Therefore, there is increasing interest in the utility and efficiency of biomass energy from this agriculture waste. Cellulose and starch are major constituents of agricultural waste. The degradation of these two substances is exclusively biological in our ecosystems. Recent demands for alternative energy sources have prompted increased interest in immobilized microbial cell systems for conversion of biomass to fuels. Fermentative production of ethanol from renewable resources has received attention due to increasing petroleum shortage. For the last two decades, ethanol production from agriculture waste by the co- immobilized-cell system has been studied extensively. The use of a co-immobilized-cell system is highly desirable to achieve ethanol productivity that is higher that of free cells and separately immobilized cells and enzyme. Over the last few years, new approaches with great potential have been used, that is, the application of co-immobilized mixed cultures for fermenting of starchy and cellulose to ethanol. With the progressive shortage of fossil fuel, many non-oil-producing countries have enthusiastically researched other possible alternatives of energy sources over recent decades. Among these, production of ethanol by fermentation on a large scale has been of considerable interest to meet the increased demand for new sources of energy. It not only solves the environmental pollution by agriculture waste, but also the production of new biomass energy. In this study, we will use and develop new coimmobilized- cell system to rapidly deal with agricultural waste, and simultaneously transform them into useful biomass energy – ethanol.

Project ID:PB9402-0095
External Project ID:NSC94-2623-7182-006-ET