Ethanol production from lignocellulosic feedstock has been under intense scrutiny as a transportation fuel due to its potential to address concerns of increasing energy consumption, limited fossil energy resources, climate changes due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, and especially use of non-food biomaterials, which address the biggest limitation...
The production of fuel ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass has the potential to replace a significant portion of non-renewable transport fuels. Woody feedstocks are composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Glucose, the monomer of cellulose, is readily utilized by wild-type S. cerevisiae, but xylose, which comprises 60% of the sugar in...
Environmental concerns about urban air quality, global climate change, energy
security and economic considerations motivate a growing interest in alternative fuels for
the transportation sector. Ethanol, a fermentation-derived fuel, can be produced by
bioconversion of renewable materials, such as wood, grass, and waste. Combustion of
ethanol fuel, in both neat...
Lignocellulosic biomass represents a vast supply of fermentable carbohydrates and functional aromatic compounds. Conversion of lignocellulosics to ethanol and other useful products would be of widespread economical and environmental benefit. Better understanding of the behavior of different lignicellulosic feedstocks in fermentation protocols as well as catalytic activities involved in lignocellulosic...
The objective of this research was to investigate the influence of physicochemical
properties of lignocellulosic biomass on the rate and extent of cellulose conversion, i.e.
the "hydrolyzability" of the substrate.
The initial two parts of this thesis investigated the interactions between various
components of pretreated biomass. The relevance of cellulase...