Review: Pre-treatments and Fermentation of Seaweed for Bioethanol Production
This article reviews the current studies on the production of bioethanol from seaweed with a focus on the process pre-treatments and variety of microorganisms used in the process. Pre-treatment selection is essential to maximize the amount of reduced suga
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Abstract This article reviews the current studies on the production of bioethanol from seaweed with a focus on the process pre-treatments and variety of microorganisms used in the process. Pre-treatment selection is essential to maximize the amount of reduced sugar for the fermentation to produce bioethanol. Specific microbial strains are matched to their ability to utilize sugar sources. Some studies focus mainly on general processing with variable microbial strains to gauge their abilities in fermentation. A summary of the current studies was carried out, and it is evident that two or more yield increasing techniques can coexist within a single process. The integration of the findings may be the key to make seaweed fermentation more efficient and affordable to serve as a sustainable and renewable energy source.
Introduction The world is facing a crisis of depleting fossil fuel energy sources. In order to replace the dependency on fossil fuel, bioethanol has attracted attention as an alternative renewable fuel. The world has been confronted with an energy crisis due to depletion of finite resources of fossil fuel (Meinita and Hong 2012). Now, R. F. Mansa (&) H. Mansuit K. F. Fong C. S. Sipaut Energy and Materials Research Group, School of Engineering and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] F. Y. Chye School of Food Science and Nutrition, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia S. M. Yasir Seaweed Research Unit, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, Kota Kinabalu 88400 Sabah, Malaysia
R. Pogaku et al. (eds.), Developments in Sustainable Chemical and Bioprocess Technology, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-6208-8_17, Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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there are various types of renewable energies that are available; however, one of the most important energy sources in near future is biomass. Biofuel is a starch/ cellulose biomass fermentation product that is a renewable energy source which can be used as an alternative for petroleum fuels. According to John et al. (2011), globally, ethanol is expected to be the most widely used biofuel. The first-generation biofuel was based on edible crops such as corn, beet, and potatoes. It produced sufficient yields of ethanol. However, it has raised morality and ethics issues as millions of people around the world are currently suffering from malnutrition and hunger (Goh and Lee 2009). It also raises the issue on the increasing proportion of land use for biomass crops. Yet the ‘‘food versus fuel’’ debate is not applicable to macroalgae or seaweed (Adams et al. 2009) due to it being a non-terrestrial plant. For the purpose of consistency, macroalgae will be referred to as seaweed in this review. Seaweed are crops that are self-sustainable, easily mass-produced and has minimal land requirement. According to John et al. (2011), seaweed has the ability to grow at a fast rate and yield huge amounts of biomass. Besides that, it can be cultivated in the
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