Bioenergy Potential, Energy Crops, and Biofuel Production in Mexico

Abstract

The negative impact of burning fossil fuels on the global climate, uncertainty over the long-term price of fossil fuelscaused in part by geopolitics and pending decisions on the exploration of oil shale and gas, tar sands and arctic oil reserves, and in part by uncertainty over future regulations on greenhouse gas emissions-and the increasing global demand for energy resulting from population growth and economic development drive the need to deploy renewable energy on a large scale. Mexico is a promising country in the development of renewable energy due to its warm and sunny climate, which supports solar energy generation and crop cultivation throughout the year, and its relative abundance of agricultural land that is suitable for energy crops, but not for food crops, thus minimizing competition between food and energy production. With a well developed infrastructure of roads, ports, and industrial centers, and a relatively low cost of labor, Mexico is among the most relevant emerging bioeconomies.In a recent study, Alemán-Nava et al.[1] reported the current use and future potential of renewable sources in the production of renewable energy, which included solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and wind energy, and bioenergy. However, these alternative sources of energy have not yet been fully exploited in Mexico. According to the Mexican Ministry of Energy (SENER) and the National Energy Balance databases [2], in 2014, Mexico produced 8826 PetaJoule (PJ = 10 15

Green Technology: Transformation of Domestic Bio-Waste into Electricity Energy to Mitigate the Global Energy and Environmental Vulnerability

“…Therefore, a model of bioreactor module described the generation of maximum bioenergy from domestic waste considering protective anerobic detention chamber ( Figure 5). Naturally, the model of the bioreactor module is being simplified by the determination of accurate form of the current-voltage (I-V) curb considering the mode of single diode electricity circuit (30,35,55).…”

Bioreactor design for enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass under the biorefinery concept

“…Second generation biofuels are produced from a diversity of lignocellulosic biomasses, including industrial, agricultural and forestry residues, as well as non-edible crops. These types of raw materials are renewable low-priced, and accessible [9,[11][12][13][14].…”

“…The proposed mass balances are presented in the following equations. Specifically, equations (11) to (14) represent the mass balances of cellulose, cellobiose, glucose and, glucose through the membrane, respectively; where mass flow rates are correlated with the rates of conversion and the bioreactor volume (V MBR ). Furthermore, equation (15) indicates the conversion of inlet cellulose into glucose.…”

In Focus: Biotechnology and chemical technology for biorefineries and biofuel production

“…In summary, we are confident that this field of research, the interaction among biofuels and biorefineries with biotechnology and chemical technology, together with bioenergy research, will expand in Mexico. To finish, we thank all of the authors for their contributions to this In Focus and all of the anonymous reviewers who contributed to improving the manuscripts.…”