Bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass

Bioethanol is one of the energy alternative sources which can replace fossil fuel as biofuel. The utilization of bioethanol in the biofuel is mixing a number of gasoline to the bioethanol with the certain ratio. This process is known as biogasoline / gasohol. Bioethanol is produced from biomass raw material with enzymatic and fermentation reaction. Bioethanol production from the first generation biomass (molasses, starch, corn etc.) was became commercial scale in the few years ago. But, the utilization of the first generation biomass caused competition between food and feed industries. Because of this problem, the bioethanol production from the second generation biomass not competing with food and feed sectors biomass was introduced by many research and development institution in many countries. Research center for chemistry-LIPI is conducting research and development of lignocellulosic bioethanol pilot plant with 10 L/day capacity. The raw material in this pilot plant is Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches (OPEFB) obtained from plantation waste. OPEFB is more abundant in Indonesia as bioethanol material feedstocks. There are three processes to the lignocellulosic bioethanol production, i.e. : Alkali pretreatment, saccharification and fermentation processes, distillation and dehydration process.