Biofuels

Abstract

It is the cost and abundant availability of raw materials that determine the economic feasibility of biofuel production. Considering these constrains, agro-industrial residues may offer cheaper options as raw materials for biofuel production. This chapter thus aims at presenting the current status and future directions of biofuel production using both conventional substrates and agro-industrial residues as raw materials and critically analyzing the prospect of agro-industrial residue based production of biofuels. Utmost care has been taken to address all the critical economic and environmental issues related to the production of each of the gaseous and liquid biofuels namely biomethane, biohydrogen, bioethanol and biodiesel in the light of available published literature information. While the important process parameters involved in anaerobic digestion and co-digestion of agro-industrial residues in various judicious combinations have been discussed for biomethane production, roles of different reactor configurations, designs and various types of cultivation processes including photo and dark fermentation employing agro-industrial waste as substrates for biohydrogen production have been analyzed. Similarly, a comparative study of bioethanol production using lignocellulosic and non-lignocellulosic wastes has been presented and discussed. Though the oil cake as an agro-industrial waste holds some promise, biodiesel production using agro-industrial residues has not been reported in literature. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.