Springer International Publishing
Cham
Springer
40538
2196-5641
Chemical and Biological Technologies in Agriculture
Chem. Biol. Technol. Agric.
Life Sciences
Agriculture
Organic Chemistry
Plant Biochemistry
Soil Science & Conservation
Plant Physiology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
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2014
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2014
The Author(s)
2014
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10.1186/s40538-014-0006-0
6
10
Bioprocesses for biofuels: an overview of the Brazilian case
Review
Biomass Usage in Brazil
1
8
2014
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1
2014
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31
2014
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1
2014
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Damaso et al.
2014
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
Monica
Caramez
Triches
Damaso
monica.damaso@embrapa.br
Cristina
Maria
Monteiro
Machado
cristina.machado@embrapa.br
Dasciana
de
Sousa
Rodrigues
dasciana.rodrigues@embrapa.br
Silvia
Goncalves
Belem
silvia.belem@embrapa.br
Thais
Fabiana
Chan
Salum
thais.salum@embrapa.br
Embrapa Agroenergy
Parque Estação Biológica S/N, Av. W3 Norte (final)
70770-901, Brasília
DF
Brazil
Abstract
Renewables are 46% in the Brazilian energy matrix, while the world scenario differs from this context to use only 13% of these resources. The biomass conversion using bioprocess has great potential to be applied in Brazil due to its large agroindustry which can produce a variety of feedstocks and byproducts that can be converted into biofuels and chemicals. The production of first-generation ethanol using sugarcane is a conventional technology in Brazil. This ethanol is the most competitive in the world, and Brazilian production reached 23.64 billion L in 2012/2013 season. Sugarcane bagasse generated from ethanol production and other biomasses obtained from forest and wood industries, crop residues, and grasses can be deconstructed to obtain sugars. These sugars may be bioconverted into second-generation ethanol and chemicals. Biodiesel is another biofuel that has been produced in Brazil. Although the commercial route to obtain biodiesel uses chemical conversion, there are researches investigating the biochemical route. Furthermore, some topics about microalgae use for biofuels are introduced. Therefore, this paper has the aim to present bioprocesses used in bioenergy production and the Brazilian overview on the conventional technology of first-generation sugarcane ethanol production. Moreover, bench studies and demonstration facilities that have been developed in the country regarding the advanced technologies are presented.
Keywords
Biomass
Cellulose
Sugarcane
Oilseeds
Byproducts
Algae
Ethanol
Biodiesel
Chemicals
Cristina Maria Monteiro Machado Dasciana de Sousa Rodrigues Silvia Goncalves Belem and Thais Fabiana Chan Salum contributed equally to this work.