%0 Journal Article
%T The Challenge of Efficient Synthesis of Biofuels from Lignocellulose for Future Renewable Transportation Fuels
%A P£¿ivi M£¿ki-Arvela
%A Eero Salminen
%A Toni Riittonen
%A Pasi Virtanen
%A Narendra Kumar
%A Jyri-Pekka Mikkola
%J International Journal of Chemical Engineering
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/674761
%X Dehydration of sugars to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has recently been under intensive study by a multitude of research groups. On the other hand, when lignocellulosic biomass is applied as the starting material, very few studies can be found in the open literature. The direct synthesis of HMF, in line with the idea of ¡°one-pot¡± synthesis strategy from lignocellulose, is demanding since the overall process should encompass dissolution, hydrolysis, and dehydration steps in a single processing unit. Ionic liquid-assisted methods to produce hydroxymethyl-furfural directly from lignocellulosic biomass are reported here together with a short overview of the most important biofuels. In reality, HMF is not suitable to be used as a single-component fuel as such, and, consequently, methods to produce HMF derivatives suitable as liquid fuels are reported. 1. Introduction The demand for renewable energy is expected to significantly increase from current levels, partially due to the depletion of fossil fuels and, also, as a result of political decisions aiming at reduced dependency on fossil resources. Among other actors, European Union (EU) has announced an ambitious goal of reaching 20% renewable energy share by 2020 [1]. In fact, the focus on the use of renewable energy is at low carbon-footprint fuels, resulting in reduced emissions of greenhouse gases to countermeasure the ever-increasing global use of fossil fuels affecting our biosphere [2]. Different sources of renewable energy such as utilization of wind and solar power, hydroelectric installations, and geothermal energy are used today. The use of biomass resources, either for direct combustion (including thermal processes such as gasification and pyrolysis) or as a source of raw material for various biological processes (fermentations; enzymatic transformation; anaerobic bacterial biogas production), as well as chemical and catalytic processes exist that aim at liquid or gaseous products. Transport sector stands for approximately one-third of the world¡¯s primary energy-consumption currently amounting to about 500 EJ [3]. Since, for example, electric cars are not ideal for long distance transportation due to the low energy capacity of even the best batteries of today, there is a strong need to develop new liquid transportation fuel mixes. Upon formulation of renewable fuels from biomass, a general central step is to reduce the oxygen content embedded in the molecular structure of any biomass. Various liquid biofuels were already used in the beginning of the era of internal combustion engines (like
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