Jay Prakash Verma
Banaras Hindu University, India
Title: Current need of alternative sustainable bioenegry production from lignocellulosic biomass
Biography
Biography: Jay Prakash Verma
Abstract
The foreseeable depletion and negative environmental impact of fossil fuels in burgeoning population, around the world advocate the utilization of renewable energies, particularly the liquid bio-fuels like bio-ethanol. The fossil fuels consumption causes lot of environmental pollution such as emission of green house gases which help in global climate change. So that urgent need of research towards the alternative green energy such as wind, water, solar and bio-ethanol. In this review we want to discuss about sustainable bio-energy production from lignocellulosic biomass. Ethanol produced from lignocellulosic biomass is a renewable and alternative to diminishing petroleum-based liquid fuels. And the major bottleneck for ethanol production is the disruption of lignin from plant cell wall. The lignocellulosic residues used to produce bio-ethanol are promising feedstock due to its compositions that are rich in polysaccharide. The lignocellulosic biomass (cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin) is the most abundantly found carbohydrate in the nature. The cellulose and hemicelluloses is easily degradable by cellulases enzyme while the lignin is most recalcitrant that reduce the rate of cellulases at time of hydrolysis of plant biomass. Lignin, the aromatic heteropolymers are primarily derived from the monolignols (the main building blocks of lignin), that accounts for nearly 30% of the organic carbon on Earth. The bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol involves three major unit steps: pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. The enzymatic digestibility of recalcitrant substrates especially, lignocellulosic material, depending upon the source of biomass, increase with lignin removal. Among these processes the pretreatment is the crucial step for lignin disruption that it makes the cellulose to more accessible for enzymatic hydrolysis. The second and most imperative step is the enzymatic hydrolysis which involves the synergistic action of cellulolytic enzymes i.e., cellulases such as endo-1, 4-β-glucanase, cellobiohydrolase and β-glucosidase for the conversion of carbohydrate polymer (Cellulose) into fermentable sugar. Fermentation process involved for conversion of glucose to bio-ethanol. This studied focused the future need of research and development towards sustainable bioenergy production from lignocellulosic biomass.