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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Peoria, Illinois » National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research » Bioenergy Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #292922
Title: Fuel ethanol production from agricultural residues

Author
item Saha, Badal
item AVCI, AYSE - Sakarya University
item Nichols, Nancy
item Qureshi, Nasib
item Cotta, Michael

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/11/2013
Publication Date: 8/16/2013
Citation: Saha, B.C., Avci, A., Nichols, N.N., Qureshi, N., Cotta, M.A. 2013. Fuel ethanol production from agricultural residues [abstract SII]. 44th World Chemistry Congress, August 11-16, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey. Paper No. 3.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Ethanol is a renewable oxygenated fuel. In 2012, about 13.3 billion gallons of fuel ethanol was produced from corn in the USA which makes up 10% of gasoline supply. Various agricultural residues such as corn stover, wheat straw, rice straw and barley straw can serve as low-cost lignocellulosic feedstock for production of fuel ethanol. Costly and energy-intensive pretreatment, generation of fermentation inhibitors, removal of these inhibitory compounds prior to fermentation, product inhibition and high cost of cellulase, developing efficient recombinant microorganisms for simultaneous fermentation of pentose and hexose sugars, integration of process steps through simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF), recovery of dilute ethanol and generation of value-added coproducts are some of the constraints that make the conversion process complex. Our research dealing with the development of cost-effective integrated process technologies for conversion of agricultural residues to fuel ethanol using a recombinant bacterium will be presented. This includes ethanol production by the bacterium from hydrothermally, dilute acid, lime and alkaline peroxide pretreated corn stover, wheat straw, barley straw and rice hulls by separate hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) and SSF. Data on batch, fed-batch and continuous production of ethanol from wheat straw hydroylzate will be presented. We will also present data on the production of ethanol from wheat straw at 100 L scale. In addition, our efforts in developing novel and improved enzymes for use in lignocellulosic biomass conversion will be highlighted. Current state of technology development and commercialization of ethanol production from agricultural residues will be discussed.