ABSTRACT
Over the last 25 years there has been considerable interest in the potential of producing fuel ethanol from biomass. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s resulted in a marked increase in the price of oil and influenced countries such as Brazil, Canada, Finland, Japan, Sweden and the USA to plan for better liquid fuel self-sufficiency (Klyosov, 1986; Vallander and Eriksson, 1990). More recently research into fuels from renewable resources has been driven by environmental concerns, particularly the role of fossil fuel contribution to poor air quality and global warming (von Sivers and Zacchi, 1993). As a result there has been considerable research and discussion about the environmental advantages of using ethanol as a transportation fuel and as a gasoline supplement.
