Biofuels: Biotechnology, Chemistry, and Sustainable Development

by Mousdale; David M.

• ISBN13: 9781420051247
• ISBN10: 1420051245
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-04
• Publisher: CRC Press

Summary

A Thoughtful Discussion of a Timely Topic Evaluating a wealth of quantitative data,Biofuels: Biotechnology, Chemistry, and Sustainable Developmentdiscusses different types of biofuels, the science behind their production, the economics of their introduction to the marketplace, their environmental impacts, and their implications for world agriculture. It broadens the discussion on biofuels beyond bioethanol and biodiesel, taking into account the data, ideas, and bioproducts that have appeared over the last fifty years. An Insider's Look at the Biotech Industry Written by a seasoned expert in the biotech industry, the book analyzes in detail the present status and future prospects of biofuels, from ethanol and biodiesel to biotechnological routes to biohydrogen. It emphasizes the ways biotechnology can improve process economics as well as facilitate sustainable agroindustries and crucial elements of a biobased economy. The authoralso explores the additional innovations required in microbial and plant biotechnology, metabolic engineering, bioreactor design, and the genetic manipulation of novel biomass species of plants, such as softwoods and algae. The Role of Biofuels in the Future With over 1,000 references and nearly 200 graphs and tables of data, this well-researched, comprehensive work examines the past and present of various biofuels while considering the future of a biocommodity economy.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Author	p. xix
Historical Development of Bioethanol as a Fuel	p. 1
Ethanol from Neolithic Times	p. 1
Ethanol and Automobiles, from Henry Ford to Brazil	p. 4
Ethanol as a Transportation Fuel and Additive: Economics and Achievements	p. 11
Starch as a Carbon Substrate for Bioethanol Production	p. 17
The Promise of Lignocellulosic Biomass	p. 26
Thermodynamic and Environmental Aspects of Ethanol as a Biofuel	p. 33
Net energy balance	p. 33
Effects on emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants	p. 40
Ethanol as a First-Generation Biofuel: Present Status and Future Prospects	p. 42
References	p. 44
Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Microbiology of Lignocellulosic Biomass	p. 49
Biomass as an Energy Source: Traditional and Modern Views	p. 49
"Slow Combustion" - Microbial Bioenergetics	p. 52
Structural and Industrial Chemistry of Lignocellulosic Biomass	p. 56
Lignocellulose as a chemical resource	p. 56
Physical and chemical pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass	p. 57
Biological pretreatments	p. 63
Acid hydrolysis to saccharify pretreated lignocellulosic biomass	p. 64
Cellulases: Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biotechnology	p. 66
Enzymology of cellulose degradation by cellulases	p. 66
Cellulases in lignocellulosic feedstock processing	p. 70
Molecular biology and biotechnology of cellulase production	p. 71
Hemicellulases: New Horizons in Energy Biotechnology	p. 78
A multiplicity of hemicellulases	p. 78
Hemicellulases in the processing of lignocellulosic biomass	p. 80
Lignin-Degrading Enzymes as Aids in Saccharification	p. 81
Commercial Choices of Lignocellulosic Feedstocks for Bioethanol Production	p. 81
Biotechnology and Platform Technologies for Lignocellulosic Ethanol	p. 86
References	p. 86
Biotechnology of Bioethanol Production from Lignocellulosic Feedstocks	p. 95
Traditional Ethanologenic Microbes	p. 95
Yeasts	p. 96
Bacteria	p. 102
Metabolic Engineering of Novel Ethanologens	p. 104
Increased pentose utilization by ethanologenic yeasts by genetic manipulation with yeast genes for xylose metabolism via xylitol	p. 104
Increased pentose utilization by ethanologenic yeasts by genetic manipulation with genes for xylose isomerization	p. 111
Engineering arabinose utilization by ethanologenic yeasts	p. 112
Comparison of industrial and laboratory yeast strains for ethanol production	p. 114
Improved ethanol production by naturally pentose-utilizing yeasts	p. 118
Assembling Gene Arrays in Bacteria for Ethanol Production	p. 120
Metabolic routes in bacteria for sugar metabolism and ethanol formation	p. 120
Genetic and metabolic engineering of bacteria for bioethanol production	p. 121
Candidate bacterial strains for commercial ethanol production in 2007	p. 133
Extrapolating Trends for Research with Yeasts and Bacteria for Bioethanol Production	p. 135
"Traditional" microbial ethanologens	p. 135
"Designer" cells and synthetic organisms	p. 141
References	p. 142
Biochemical Engineering and Bioprocess Management for Fuel Ethanol	p. 157
The Iogen Corporation Process as a Template and Paradigm	p. 157
Biomass Substrate Provision and Pretreatment	p. 160
Wheat straw - new approaches to complete saccharification	p. 161
Switchgrass	p. 162
Corn stover	p. 164
Softwoods	p. 167
Sugarcane bagasse	p. 170
Other large-scale agricultural and forestry biomass feedstocks	p. 171
Fermentation Media and the "Very High Gravity" Concept	p. 172
Fermentation media for bioethanol production	p. 173
Highly concentrated media developed for alcohol fermentations	p. 174
Fermentor Design and Novel Fermentor Technologies	p. 179
Continuous fermentations for ethanol production	p. 179
Fed-batch fermentations	p. 184
Immobilized yeast and bacterial cell production designs	p. 185
Contamination events and buildup in fuel ethanol plants	p. 187
Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation and Direct Microbial Conversion	p. 189
Downstream Processing and By-Products	p. 194
Ethanol recovery from fermented broths	p. 194
Continuous ethanol recovery from fermentors	p. 195
Solid by-products from ethanol fermentations	p. 196
Genetic Manipulation of Plants for Bioethanol Production	p. 199
Engineering resistance traits for biotic and abiotic stresses	p. 199
Bioengineering increased crop yield	p. 200
Optimizing traits for energy crops intended for biofuel production	p. 203
Genetic engineering of dual-use food plants and dedicated energy crops	p. 205
A Decade of Lignocellulosic Bioprocess Development: Stagnation or Consolidation?	p. 206
References	p. 211
The Economics of Bioethanol	p. 227
Bioethanol Market Forces in 2007	p. 227
The impact of oil prices on the "future" of biofuels after 1980	p. 227
Production price, taxation, and incentives in the market economy	p. 228
Cost Models for Bioethanol Production	p. 230
Early benchmarking studies of corn and lignocellulosic ethanol in the United States	p. 231
Corn ethanol in the 1980s: rising industrial ethanol prices and the development of the "incentive" culture	p. 238
Western Europe in the mid-1980s: assessments of biofuels programs made at a time of falling real oil prices	p. 239
Brazilian sugarcane ethanol in 1985: after the first decade of the Proalcool Program to substitute for imported oil	p. 242
Economics of U.S. corn and biomass ethanol economics in the mid-1990s	p. 243
Lignocellulosic ethanol in the mid-1990s: the view from Sweden	p. 244
Subsequent assessments of lignocellulosic ethanol in Europe and the United States	p. 246
Pilot Plant and Industrial Extrapolations for Lignocellulosic Ethanol	p. 251
Near-future projections for bioethanol production costs	p. 251
Short- to medium-term technical process improvements with their anticipated economic impacts	p. 253
Bioprocess economics: a Chinese perspective	p. 257
Delivering Biomass Substrates for Bioethanol Production: The Economics of a New Industry	p. 258
Upstream factors: biomass collection and delivery	p. 258
Modeling ethanol distribution from production to the end user	p. 259
Sustainable Development and Bioethanol Production	p. 260
Definitions and semantics	p. 260
Global and local sustainable biomass sources and production	p. 261
Sustainability of sugar-derived ethanol in Brazil	p. 264
Impact of fuel economy on ethanol demand for gasoline blends	p. 269
Scraping the Barrel: an Emerging Reliance on Biofuels and Biobased Products?	p. 271
References	p. 279
Diversifying the Biofuels Portfolio	p. 285
Biodiesel: Chemistry and Production Processes	p. 285
Vegetable oils and chemically processed biofuels	p. 285
Biodiesel composition and production processes	p. 287
Biodiesel economics	p. 293
Energetics of biodiesel production and effects on greenhouse gas emissions	p. 295
Issues of ecotoxicity and sustainability with expanding biodiesel production	p. 299
Fischer-Tropsch Diesel: Chemical Biomass-to-Liquid Fuel Transformations	p. 301
The renascence of an old chemistry for biomass-based fuels?	p. 301
Economics and environmental impacts of FT diesel	p. 303
Methanol, Glycerol, Butanol, and Mixed-Product "Solvents"	p. 305
Methanol: thermochemical and biological routes	p. 305
Glycerol: fermentation and chemical synthesis routes	p. 307
ABE (acetone, butanol, and ethanol) and "biobutanol"	p. 309
Advanced Biofuels: A 30-Year Technology Train	p. 311
References	p. 314
Radical Options for the Development of Biofuels	p. 321
Biodiesel from Microalgae and Microbes	p. 321
Marine and aquatic biotechnology	p. 321
"Microdiesel"	p. 324
Chemical Routes for the Production of Monooxygenated C6 Liquid Fuels from Biomass Carbohydrates	p. 324
Biohydrogen	p. 325
The hydrogen economy and fuel cell technologies	p. 325
Bioproduction of gases: methane and H[subscript 2] as products of anaerobic digestion	p. 328
Production of H[subscript 2] by photosynthetic organisms	p. 334
Emergence of the hydrogen economy	p. 341
Microbial Fuel Cells: Eliminating the Middlemen of Energy Carriers	p. 343
Biofuels or a Biobased Commodity Chemical Industry?	p. 346
References	p. 347
Biofuels as Products of Integrated Bioprocesses	p. 353
The Biorefinery Concept	p. 353
Biomass Gasification as a Biorefinery Entry Point	p. 356
Fermentation Biofuels as Biorefinery Pivotal Products	p. 357
Succinic acid	p. 361
Xylitol and "rare" sugars as fine chemicals	p. 364
Glycerol - A biorefinery model based on biodiesel	p. 367
The Strategic Integration of Biorefineries with the Twenty-First Century Fermentation Industry	p. 369
Postscript: What Biotechnology Could Bring About by 2030	p. 372
Chicago, Illinois, October 16-18, 2007	p. 373
Biotechnology and strategic energy targets beyond 2020	p. 375
Do biofuels need - rather than biotechnology - the petrochemical industry?	p. 377
References	p. 379
Index	p. 385
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