Research Progress on Fuel Ethanol Production from Lignocellulosic Biomass

Fuel ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass has been the inevitable direction of next generation of fuel ethanol.A review of key technologies of fuel ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass was presented.The research progress was reviewed in three aspects:pretreatment methods of lignocellulosic biomass such as physical method,chemical method,steam explosion method,biological method etc.,hydrolysis(i.e.saccharification) technologies including sulfuric acid hydrolysis and enzyme hydrolysis,fermentation technologies such as direct fermentation,separate hydrolysis and fermentation,simultaneous saccharification and fermentation etc.The key bottleneck problems and future development trend of lignocellulose-based ethanol were presented.