Ravindra Pogaku, Tapan Kumar Biswas, and Rahmath Abdulla

Abstract Biofuels can be broadly defined as solids, liquids, or gas fuels consisting of, or derived from, plant biomass. Its use here is primarily with respect to a liquid transportation fuel (bioethanol or biodiesel). A major environmental issue being addressed by the global community is the sustainable supply of energy in parallel with a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This will be a significant technological and socioeconomic challenge because of our dependence on fossil fuel combustion for energy and the fact that it is this combustion that is the primary cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

Keywords Biofuels • Bioethanol • Palm • Malaysia • Low cost

7.1 Introduction

Presently over 80% of our global energy supply needs (~10 TW per year) are derived from fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) (United Nations Development Program 1996), and it is clear why this is the case. Firstly, the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels is considerably less than that of alternative renewable energy sources, for example, $0.04 per kWh from coal compared to $0.50 per kWh from solar pho­tovoltaic. Secondly, estimates of global fossil fuel reserves indicate that they will be available in significant quantities for more than 200 years. To break this cycle of fossil fuel dependence, and hence alleviate the environmental impact of greenhouse

R. Pogaku (*) • R. Abdulla

School of Engineering and Information Technology, University Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia e-mail: ravindra@ums. edu. my

T. K. Biswas

Department of Chemistry, Rajshahi University, 6205 Rajshahi, Bangladesh

R. Pogaku and R. Hj. Sarbatly (eds.), Advances in Biofuels,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6249-1_7, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 gas emissions, breakthroughs are needed in alternative energy sources to improve their cost and availability (Hoffert et al. 1998). Needless to say, the world popula­tion is increasing at an alarming rate and so is the liquid fuel demand in the transport sector.

Biomass can serve as an excellent alternative source to meet the present and future fuel demands. Any type of fuel generated from biomass is termed biofuel. The two most common and successful biofuels are biodiesel and bioethanol which are aimed at replacing mainly the conventional liquid fuels like diesel and petrol. Bioethanol, an eco-friendly fuel made from plant biomass, is an alternative to con­ventional gasoline. Ethanol is produced by utilizing sugar-containing feedstock such as renewable biomass energy through a fermentation process and can be a potential source of sustainable transportation fuel (Nigam and Singh 2010).

The biofuel that is expected to be most widely used around the globe is ethanol, which can be produced from abundant supplies of starch/cellulose biomass. The most important bioethanol production countries in the world are Brazil, the USA, and Canada (Chiaramonti 2007). In addition, ethanol is less toxic and is readily biodegradable, and its use produces fewer airborne pollutants than petroleum fuel. Ethanol-blended gasoline has the potential to contribute significantly to reduce these emissions. It can also be used as a fuel for electric power generation, in fuel cells (thermochemical action) and in power cogeneration systems, and as a raw material in chemical industry.

Bioethanol can be employed to replace octane enhancers such as methylcyclo — pentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) and aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene or oxygenates such as methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) (Champagne 2007). Although growth of feedstock crops for ethanol production can address the environmental issues, it has raised doubts about its possible impact on food supply and security. Around the world, an urgent demand for alternative, sustainable fuels and feedstocks is growing to replace food-based feedstock. In comparison to other feedstocks, oil palm empty fruit bunch can provide a high-yield source of biofuels without compromising food supplies, rainforests, or arable land (Subhadra and Edwards 2010).

Today, Malaysia is one of the world’s largest palm oil producers. The palm oil industry is the backbone of the Malaysian economic and social development. During the production process of palm oil, five different biomass residuals become available, which are empty fruit bunch, palm kernel shell, palm oil mill effluent, mesocarp fiber, and palm kernel cake. In total, more than 50% of the fresh fruit bunch remains as a residual. Each of the residuals has an interesting energy poten­tial of around 20,000 kJ/kg. This is good energy potential and relatively low investments in comparison to other options. Based on the options of the residuals, it came forward that it would be most attractive to focus on the option of empty fruit bunch. Economically, EFB can be used as a resource for conversion to bio­ethanol since production is 6.1 million tons dry EFB and forecasted to increase to 7.6 million tons dry EFB by 2025. The Danish Technical University had con­ducted tests on EFB in Malaysia for the production of cellulose-ethanol and found it suitable for ethanol production with an estimated yield of 39% (388 L ethanol, on 1 ton dry raw material). Other parts of palm like trunks has the highest ethanol yield of 451 L/ton dry matter, while fronds have the lowest ethanol yield of 377 L/ ton (Luo et al. 2010).

Several positive environmental effects of biofuel consumption have been already proved, for example, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the subsequent improvement of the air quality (especially in cities with high smog contamination), as well as positive energy balance. The positive impact of extended biofuel con­sumption nowadays (versus pure gasoline consumption) can contribute to positive long-term changes in the environment. Due to a lower air pollution, the soil and groundwater contamination from the regular rainfall can be diminished, which clearly provides positive implications, for example, for food production. Thus, in a long-term perspective, the positive effects of biofuel consumption could indirectly help to reduce negative effects of the current biofuel production. Unclear however is which effects would dominate and how the mentioned changes can influence other sectors, especially agricultural production, that can be directly affected by potential negative effects of biofuel production or by other sectors.

Our approach incorporates efficient production of fermentable sugars, with the focus on mitigating the production of potential fermentation inhibitors. However, few amount of research work has been reported on various strategies for bioethanol production. Studies on the effects and optimization of the process variables that influence the performance of the pretreatment process will be essential to the com­mercial outlook of bioethanol development from EBF.

Many are looking to renewable energy and in particular biofuels as at least a partial solution. As such, an increasing share of major crops like maize, sugarcane, jatropha, and rapeseed, in addition to some new feedstock like oil palm, is now being diverted to biofuel production, and the trend is expected to continue. While this is most evident in the industrialized world and has been the case with sugarcane in Brazil for more than three decades, developing countries too are making signifi­cant investments in and establishing mandates for biofuel production and consump­tion. China, for example, with its booming economy and rapidly expanding energy consumption is expected to diversify its energy supplies beyond the use of coal and oil, for both economic and environmental reasons (Chandrashekhar et al. 2011).

Brazil and the USA are the leading producers of bioethanol accounting for over 90% of world supply. Brazil, the most competitive producer, has the longest history of ethanol production, dating back to the 1930s. About half of its sugarcane is used to produce ethanol. It is already the world’s leader in biofuel production and has tremendous capacity to further increase its ethanol production from sugarcane and biodiesel from soybean and perhaps oil palm. Annual ethanol production is pro­jected to reach some 44 billion L by 2016 (from 21 billion today), and the govern­ment has set various mandates for biodiesel use (Jegannathan et al. 2009).

As a renewable energy source, biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether they offer carbon savings and thus are effective in combating climate change depends on the type of feedstock (raw material), production process, changes in land use, and conversion into a usable fuel. The largest GHG reductions (90%) can be derived from Brazil sugarcane-based bioethanol, followed by ethanol from cellulosic feedstock (70-90%). Ethanol from sugar beets and biodiesel is next (40­50%), followed by soybean-based biodiesel. Ethanol from starchy grains yields about a 12% reduction (Hill et al. 2006), although more recent analysis for maize — based ethanol systems in the USA shows GHG reduction between 25 and 75% (Liska et al. 2007). However, this and the other analyses above largely fail to capture a key element in the life cycle analysis—the direct and indirect changes in land use. Some methods of producing biofuels/bioethanol actually increase global warming due to land conversion and the release of huge amounts of carbon that otherwise would remain stored in plants and soil.

Based on the literature review and the research set forth there, as well as the presented analytical discussion, biofuels can have both positive and negative envi­ronmental effects, depending on a number of other factors such as implemented technologies, soil types, climate conditions, intensity of soil cultivation, and others. The positive effects of biofuel consumption expected in the future, such as air qual­ity improvement, can contribute to the improvement of environmental conditions in rural areas generally, since lower air pollution brings about lower soil and ground­water pollution from rainfall and snowfall. The empirical analysis that will be pre­sented in this research shows the scope and range of potential environmental effects of biofuel and ethanol consumption and production. Similarly, CO2 emission reduc­tions resulting from ethanol consumption amount to 255.1^25.1 million tons in the USA and 20.2-33.7 million tons in the EU. Regarding negative environmental effects, the cumulated amount of fertilizers used for the biofuel maize production in the USA in 2006-2018 was estimated to amount to 53,983.2 million kg and 1,173.2 million kg for biofuel soybean production. Referring to the presented analyses and due to missing empirical studies on environmental effects of biofuels, many ques­tions are still open. Further research is necessary, especially in terms of questions such as energy inputs and outputs, costs of biofuel production, biomass production for energy purposes, second — and third-generation biofuels, implications of biofuel feedstock production on other sectors, especially on agriculture and rural develop­ment, as well as decision-making and biofuel policy design.