ABSTRACT
Ethanol has been a key industrial chemical for many years. Fuel ethanol, in particular, is considered as being more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. It has been seen as a replacement for gasoline. Fuel ethanol can be produced from three main types of raw materials: sugars, starches, and lignocellulosic materials. Ethanol is currently produced from sucrose and starch. Supplies of sucrose and starch will not be suffi cient to meet the feedstock demand in the ethanol industry. The gasoline market in the United States alone is 150 billion gallons per year. Replacement of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MEBE) as a gasoline additive at 6% of total gasoline volume in a short term requires approximately 10 billion gallons of ethanol per year. Production of 10 billion gallons of ethanol requires about 30% of the United States farmland currently growing corn (Dean et al., 2006).
