Pretreatment technologies are aimed to increase enzyme accessibility to biomass and yields of fermentable sugars. In general, pretreatment methods fall into four different categories including physical, chemical, physico-chemical, and biological. This paper comprehensively reviews the lignocellulosic wastes to bioethanol process with a focus on pretreatment methods, their mechanisms, advantages and disadvantages as well as the combinations of different pretreatment technologies. Moreover, the new advances in plant “omics” and genetic engineering approaches to increase cellulose composition, reduce cellulose crystallinity, produce hydrolases and protein modules disrupting plant cell wall substrates, and modify lignin structure in plants have also been expansively presented.

Lignocellulosic biomass to bioethanol, a comprehensive review with a focus on pretreatment

http://www.icb.osaka-u.ac.jp/AnnuRep/AnnuRep33/381-388.pdf

The anaerobic digestion of solid organic waste

A review on dark fermentative biohydrogen production from organic biomass: Process parameters and use of by-products

A review of the production and applications of waste-derived volatile fatty acids

Volatile oil price and growing emphasis on environmental conservation have stimulated the development and utilisation of biomass as a vital source of renewable energy. In reducing the global dependency on fossil fuels, rice husk and rice straw which are the widely abundant agricultural wastes from the rice industry have a vital role to play. This paper reviews the key aspects of the utilisation of rice husk and rice straw as important sources of renewable energy. The paper provides some essential background information that includes the physical and chemical characteristics that dictates the quality of these rice biomasses. This paper also describes the various chemical and physical pretreatment techniques that can facilitate handling and transportation of rice straw and husk. Finally, the paper presents the state-of-the-art on thermo-chemical and bio-chemical technologies to convert rice husk and rice straw into energy.

A review on utilisation of biomass from rice industry as a source of renewable energy

Improving hydrogen production from cassava starch by combination of dark and photo fermentation

Combination of dark- and photo-fermentation to enhance hydrogen production and energy conversion efficiency

Microwave-assisted alkali pretreatment of rice straw to promote enzymatic hydrolysis and hydrogen production in dark- and photo-fermentation

Hydrogen is considered as an ideal alternative to fossil fuels due to its high energy density by mass and clean combustion product. Using anaerobic bacteria to ferment biomass and produce renewable hydrogen is receiving increased attention. Aquatic algal biomass, which can be sourced from natural algal bloom or mass cultivation, is considered as a promising substrate for hydrogen fermentation. This paper reviews the recent developments in fermentative hydrogen production from algal biomass, with the main focus on hydrogen production potential and its current technological state. The stoichiometric hydrogen yields of algal biomass in dark fermentation are predicted based on the theoretical contents of monosaccharides from carbohydrates and glycerol from lipids in biomass. Hydrogen yields of algal biomass by dark fermentation can be improved by using efficient pretreatments at optimized biomass carbon/nitrogen ratios with domesticated hydrogen-producing bacteria as the inoculum. The effluent of dark fermentation, which is rich in volatile fatty acids, should be used for the production of biofuels and biochemicals to further improve the energy efficiency and economic feasibility of hydrogen fermentation.

Huibo Su

Papers

Improving hydrogen production from cassava starch by combination of dark and photo fermentation

Combination of dark- and photo-fermentation to enhance hydrogen production and energy conversion efficiency

Microwave-assisted alkali pretreatment of rice straw to promote enzymatic hydrolysis and hydrogen production in dark- and photo-fermentation

Fermentative hydrogen production using algal biomass as feedstock

Hydrogen production by mixed bacteria through dark and photo fermentation