Biomass to biofuel: a review on production technology

The amalgamation of climate change, depletion of natural resource, and scarcity of fossil fuel have triggered a sense of urgency among researchers, development practitioners, and industrialist to find sustainable and viable solutions in the area of biofuels. As a researcher, we have to take up this challenge to secure our energy future with the help of sustainable approach and technological advancement to produce green fuel from the organic sources or biomass. Biomass comes generally from organic natural matter such as trees, wood, manure, sewage, grass cuttings, and timber waste and is a source of huge green energy called biofuel. It includes most of the biological material, living or dead. This energy is used industrially and domestically since many years, but the recent trend is on the production of green fuel with different advance processing systems in a sustainable way. Biomass is becoming a booming industry now because it is cheaper and there are many organic wastes all around and is quite effective for the sustainable use of the bioenergy. In the last few years, the world has seen a remarkable development in the biofuel production technology, and three generations of biofuel already exist in our society. The combination of membrane technology with the existing process line can play a vital role for the production of green fuel in a sustainable manner. In this paper, the science and technology for sustainable biofuel production will be discuss for a cleaner world. (c) 2012 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.