Application of enzymes in sustainable liquid transportation fuels production

Abstract

These days the shortage of petrochemicals and environmental pollution are two major challenges, which need to be overcome by our society. As limited petroleum resources have become increasingly depleted, shortage of petroleum oil as well as rise in gasoline prices have become crucial factors in restricting the global economy. Therefore use of biofuels produced from bio-based materials serve as good alternate to petroleum based fuels as these offer various benefits to society and environment. Biofuels also offer a sustainable liquid fuel as bioethanol and biodiesel for transport sector. But different challenges have been associated with biofuel sector and one of them is need of efficient hydrolysis methods. Use of enzymes for effective hydrolysis of biomass can address the issue of hydrolysis of biomassas different enzymes can target the different components of biomass specifically. Therefore different enzymes used for hydrolysis of biomass, fermentation, limitations of enzymes are discussed in this review. Because of the different topics and challenges listed in this review and paucity of government policies to create the demand for biofuels, it may takemore time for the enzymes to hit the market place than previously projected.