ABSTRACT
BYONG-HUN JEON, JEONG-A CHOI, HYUN-CHUL KIM, JAEHOON HWANG, REDA A.I. ABOU-SHANAB, BRIAN A. DEMPSEY, JOHN M. REGAN, AND JUNG RAE KIM
9.1 BACKGROUND
There has been an increasing interest in use of the renewable and sustainable biomass, namely the third generation feedstock for bioenergy production. Microalgae have gained considerable attention as an alternative biofuel feedstock [1,2] as recent discoveries indicate that most algal biomass is exceedingly rich in carbohydrate and oil [3], which can be converted to biofuels using existing technology. Especially high levels of biogas and biofuel can be produced using carbohydrate of algal biomass via fermentation process [4]. Glucose in algal biomass is the most important monosaccharide affecting the fermentative ethanol production that
is greatly dependent upon the composition of carbohydrate components in organic substrates. Bioenergy production from biomass generally requires three sequential processes, i.e., hydrolysis, acidification, and bioenergy generation. Numerous studies using algal biomass have reported that hydrolysis is often the rate-limiting step due to rigid cell walls and cytoplasmic membranes that inhibit or delay subsequent biodegradation in the fermentation processes.
