BIOFUEL

Biofuels are material that comes from plants (Biomass). They differ from fossil fuels in that they are derived from renewable sources including crops, animal wastes and some forms of rubbish.

SOURCES
Crops (sugar cane, Potato, sugar beet) Agricultural residues leftover material. Forestry wastes Muncipal solid waste Food processing and other industrial wastes

Main Components of Biomass

1. Cellulose
Major source of carbon in biomass at levels of 40-60% by weight. Complex polysaccharide made from glucose. Resistant to hydrolyzed.

2. Hemicellulose
Source of carbon in biomass at levels of 20-40% by weight. Complex polysaccharide made from Variety of five and six carbon sugars. Relatively easy to hydrolyzed into simple sugars but the sugars are difficult to ferment.

3. Lignin
Complex polymer provide structural integrity in plants. Makes 10-24 % by weight of biomass. It remains as residual material after the sugars in the biomass have been converted to ethanol. It contains lot of energy and can ba burned to produce steam and electricity for the biomass ethanol process.

BIOFUEL (Bioethanol) Production Process

Bioethanol is a form of renewable energy that can be produced from agricultural feed stocks, sugar cane, bagasse, barley ,potatoes, corn, grain, wheat and other biomass and cellulose waste. Ethanol is produced by microbial fermentation of the sugar. Microbial fermentation only works on sugars. Currently only the sugar (sugar cane) , starch (corn) are economically converted to bioethanol however there is much activity in the area of cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol
Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants. It is a type of biofuel produced from lignocellulose a structural material that comprises much of the mass of plants. Lignocellulose is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin.

Ways of Producing Ethanol

There are two ways of producing ethanol from cellulose
1. Cellulolysis processes which consist of hydrolysis on pretreated lignocellulosic materials, using enzymes to break complex cellulose into simple sugars such as glucose and followed by

fermentation and distillation.

Ways of Producing Ethanol

2. Gasification

that transforms the lignocellulosic raw material into gaseous carbon monoxide and hydrogen. These gases can be converted to ethanol by fermentation or chemical catalysis.

Cellulolysis (biological approach)

There are four or five stages to produce ethanol. using a biological approach 1. Biomass Handling

2. A "pretreatment" phase, to make the lignocellulosic material such as wood or straw amenable to hydrolysis, 3. Cellulose hydrolysis (cellulolysis), to break down the molecules into sugars; 4. Separation of the sugar solution from the residual materials, notably lignin 5. Microbial fermentation of the sugar solution; 6. Distillation to produce roughly 95% pure alcohol. 7. Dehydration by molecular sieves to bring the ethanol concentration to over 99.5%

1. Biomass Handling.
Biomass goes through a size-reduction step to make it easier to handle and to make the ethanol production process more efficient. For example, agricultural residues go through a grinding process and wood goes through a chipping process to achieve a uniform particle size.

2. Pretreatment
lignocellulose is the most abundant plant material resource.
An effective pretreatment is needed to liberate the cellulose from the lignin seal and its crystalline structure so as to render it accessible for a subsequent hydrolysis step. Pretreatments are done through physical or chemical means.

Pretreatment Techniques
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Acid Hydrolysis Steam Explosion Ammonia Fiber Expansion Organosolve Sulfite Pretreatment Alkaline Wet Oxidation Ozone Pretreatment

3. Cellulolytic Hydrolysis
The cellulose molecules are composed of long chains of sugar molecules. In the hydrolysis process, these chains are broken down to free the sugar, before it is fermented for alcohol production.

Cellulolytic processes
There are two major cellulose hydrolysis (cellulolysis) processes: a chemical reaction using acids, or an enzymatic reaction. 1. 2. Chemical hydrolysis Enzymatic hydrolysis

Chemical hydrolysis
Hydrolysis is performed by attacking the cellulose with an acid. Dilute acid may be used under high heat and high pressure, or more concentrated acid can be used at lower temperatures and atmospheric pressure. The product from this hydrolysis is then neutralized and yeast fermentation is used to produce ethanol

Enzymatic hydrolysis
Cellulose chains can be broken into glucose molecules by cellulase enzymes. This process uses several enzymes at various stages of this conversion. lignocellulosic materials can be enzymatically hydrolyzed at a relatively mild condition (50oC and pH5).

4. Microbial Fermentation
In industrial microbiology the term fermentation is ,any chemical transformation of organic compounds carried out by using microorganisms and their enzymes. Industrial processes using microorganisms develop the enzymatic activities of the microbes to produce substances of commercial value. Energy conversion by living cell is the primary property. Bakers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisusing miciae), has long been used in the brewery industry to produce ethanol from hexoses (6carbon sugar). Due to the complex nature of the carbohydrates present in lignocellulosic biomass, a significant amount of xylose and arabinose (5-carbon sugars derived from the hemicellulose portion of the lignocellulose) is also present in the hydrolysate.

Combined hydrolysis and fermentation

Some species of bacteria have been found capable of direct conversion of a cellulose substrate into ethanol. One example is Clostridium thermocellum, which uses a complex cellulos to break down cellulose and synthesize ethanol. However, C. thermocellum also produces other products during cellulose metabolism, including acetate and lactate, in addition to ethanol, lowering the efficiency of the process.

 The technology utilized in fermentation processes are planned to obtained maximum growth of an organism under the optimum physical conditions in a specific medium for the production of a preferred end products. A fermenters or bioreactor is a container designed to provide an optimum environment in which microorganisms or enzymes can interact with substrate and form the desired products. The fermenters are of two types. OPEN CLOSE

 During fermentation it is essential to regulate many factors within determined values, 1. Oxygen and carbon dioxide 2. pH 3. Temperature 4. Media concentration 5. Sterility within fermenter

5. Distillation
For the ethanol to be usable as a fuel, water must be removed. Most of the water is removed by distillation, but the purity is limited to 95-96% due to the formation of a low-boiling water-ethanol azeotrope. The 95.6% m/m (96.5% v/v) ethanol, 4.4% m/m (3.5% v/v) water mixture may be used as a fuel alone, but unlike anhydrous ethanol, is immiscible in gasoline, so the water fraction is typically removed in further treatment in order to burn in combination with gasoline in gasoline engines.

6. Dehydration
There are basically five dehydration processes to remove the water from an azeotropic ethanol/water mixture. azeotropic distillation and consists of adding benzene or cyclohexane to the mixture. When these components are added to the mixture, it forms a heterogeneous azeotropic mixture in vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium, which when distilled produces anhydrous ethanol in the column bottom, and a vapor mixture of water and cyclohexane/benzene. When condensed, this becomes a two-phase liquid mixture.

 A new process uses molecular sieves to remove water from fuel ethanol. In this process, ethanol vapor under pressure passes through a bed of molecular sieve beads. The bead's pores are sized to allow absorption of water while excluding ethanol. After a period of time, the bed is regenerated under vacuum or in the flow of inert atmosphere (e.g. N2) to remove the absorbed water. Two beds are often used so that one is available to absorb water while the other is being regenerated.

Chemistry
Glucose (a simple sugar) is created in the plant by photosynthesis. 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + light C6H12O6 + 6 O2 During ethanol fermentation, glucose is decomposed into ethanol and carbon dioxide. C6H12O6 2 C2H5OH+ 2 CO2 + heat During combustion ethanol reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water, and heat: C2H5OH + 3 O2 2 CO2 + 3 H2O + heat After doubling the combustion reaction because two molecules of ethanol are produced for each glucose molecule, and adding all three reactions together, there are equal numbers of each type of atom on each side of the equation, and the net reaction for the overall production and consumption of ethanol is just: light heat

 Ethanol may also be produced industrially from ethene (ethylene). Addition of water to the double bond converts ethene to ethanol: C2H4 + H2O CH3CH2OH This is done in the presence of an acid which catalyzes the reaction, but is not consumed. The ethene is produced from petroleum by steam cracking. When ethanol is burned in the atmosphere rather than in pure oxygen, other chemical reactions occur with different components of the atmosphere such as nitrogen (N2). This leads to the production of nitrous oxides, a major air pollutant.

Common use of Biofuel

Ethanol can be used as a fuel for cars in its pure form, but it is usually used as a gasoline additive to increase octane and improve vehicle emissions. Most cars and trucks on the road today are fueled by gasoline and diesel fuels. These fuels are produced from oil, which is a non-renewable fossil fuel. Non-renewable fuels depend on resources that will eventually run out. Renewable resources, in contrast, are constantly replenished and will never run out. Biomass is one type of renewable resource, which includes plants and organic wastes