Fuel Ethanol Production from Sugarcane

Book excerpt: This book offers a broad understanding of bioethanol production from sugarcane, although a few other substrates, except corn, will also be mentioned. The 10 chapters are grouped in five sections. The Fuel Ethanol Production from Sugarcane in Brazil section consists of two chapters dealing with the first-generation ethanol Brazilian industrial process. The Strategies for Sugarcane Bagasse Pretreatment section deals with emerging physicochemical methods for biomass pretreatment, and the non-conventional biomass source for lignocellulosic ethanol production addresses the potential of weed biomass as alternative feedstock. In the Recent Approaches for Increasing Fermentation Efficiency of Lignocellulosic Ethanol section, potential and research progress using thermophile bacteria and yeasts is presented, taking advantage of microorganisms involved in consolidating or simultaneous hydrolysis and fermentation processes. Finally, the Recent Advances in Ethanol Fermentation section presents the use of cold plasma and hydrostatic pressure to increase ethanol production efficiency. Also in this section the use of metabolic-engineered autotrophic cyanobacteria to produce ethanol from carbon dioxide is mentioned.