Biofuels and Biorefinery

Biomass materials like oil-rich and sugar-rich crops are used for production of liquid fuels. The main crops are sugar beet and oilseed rape. Bio-fuels produced in recent decade are biodiesel and bio-ethanol, which are used for replacement of fossil fuels. New processes are developing to produce Hydrogen and biobutanol(from sugar beet) from biomass. At initial period of biofuels it was a questioning that does it could be commercialized because the food crops are used as raw material and bring an imbalance in food distribution worldwide.

Even though biofuels can be produced from various sources each having a unique method of producing it, there is the need for attaining a common fuel with the distinct specification which can be attained by the Biorefinery. The biomasses obtained from crops are referred as first and second generation crops.

The chemical process methods which are in practice are esterification, fermentation and thermochemical mechanism (pyrolysis). Based on the feedstock the methods are selected.For example, oil from seed rape, esterification of the oil is done to produce biodiesel, for wheat straw it goes to hydrolysis and fermentation of the lignocelluloses to produce biodiesel and wheat grains the same process is followed with the starch obtained from it.