Utilization of Agro-Industrial Residues and Municipal Waste of Plant Origin for Cellulosic Ethanol Production

Abstract

Today's search for alternative sources of energy to reduce the use of fossil fuels is motivated by environmental, socioeconomic and political reasons. The use of agro-industrial and municipal wastes of plant origin for ethanol production appears to be the best option to solve the dilemma of using food sources to produce biofuels, since it adds value to these wastes in eco-efficient processes. This paper highlights the potential of agro-industrial and municipal wastes for cellulosic ethanol production.

Use of cultivars of low cost, agroindustrial and urban waste in the production of cellulosic ethanol in Brazil: A proposal to utilization of microdistillery

“…That way, it made possible the increase in the offer of products generated by sugar-energetic power plants [2,5]. Furthermore, stands out the global production of cellulosic ethanol as an alternative to ethanol produced based on food sources [5][6][7][8][9][10], as evidenced by Sastri and Lee [10] (Fig. 1).…”

“…As an alternative to food sources arises the use of agroindustrial and urban wastes [7,[150][151][152][153] and plants cultivated in inhospitable areas [154][155][156][157]. This scenario enables aggregate value to these biomasses, allowing increased production of fuel without the need for expansion in the use of agricultural lands, still providing subsidies to meet the targets established in the diplomatic accords such as the Montreal Protocol in 1987, Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009.…”

“…Biofuel production generally uses substrates derived from food crops (e.g. corn in the United States), which have afforded polemic between the destination of this vegetable biomass for food or biofuel production [7,9,41,[147][148][149]. Therefore, there is a great research effort for obtaining sustainable sources of biomass for biofuels production, mainly ethanol.…”

“…the generation of these urban municipal solid wastes is motivated by the socioeconomic development of citizens, whose consumption increases day after day. Therefore, it increases the offering of substrate for the production of ethanol, mainly using urban solid waste from plant origin [7,153]. Brazil generates 597 million tons per year of organic waste [12].…”

“…1). In Brazil, the production of cellulosic ethanol is being projected, at first, from waste sugarcane [1,5,7,[11][12][13], estimating that the first Brazilian power plants of this type will be in operation in 2014 [14].…”