Growing societal responsiveness to the long-term environmental impact of human activities has increased the drive to develop sustainable and carbon-neutral approaches to energy production. One of the most attractive possible substitutes for petroleum-derived products, such as oil and commodity chemicals, is plant biomass.
Feedstocks such as corn and sugarcane have been bred over thousands of years for their capacity to store high levels of starch (in the case of corn kernels) or sucrose (in the case of sugarcane stalks). Current industrial processes for biofuel production depend on traditional methods of converting these simple but valuable sugar, starch, and oil feedstocks into liquid fuels, but these techniques often leave behind a large amount of more chemically complex agricultural material as waste.
The energy in biomass is derived by means of photosynthesis, in which plants use energy from the sun to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. Thus, realizing the full potential of biofuels depends directly on utilizing more of the carbon or carbon dioxide equivalents found in biomass. Most of the carbon in a plant is stored as lignocellulosic biomass, which is typically considered crop residue. Made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin polymers, these parts of the plant evolved to protect and preserve the integrity of plant structures, so they are difficult to break down.
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