ABSTRACT
Crude oil–based gasoline fuels have been widely used in the transportation sector since the 1920s. However, there have been great public concerns over the adverse environmental and human impact of these fuels. Hence, biomass-based bioethanol fuels have increasingly been used in blending gasoline fuels, in fuel cells, and in biochemical and biohydrogen fuel production in a biorefinery context. However, it is necessary to pretreat the biomass to enhance the yield of bioethanol prior to bioethanol fuel production from the feedstocks through hydrolysis of the biomass and fermentation of resulting hydrolysates. Influential research in the field of bioethanol fuels has intensified in this context in the key research fronts of the production of bioethanol fuels and to a lesser extent utilization and evaluation of bioethanol fuels. For the first research front, pretreatment and hydrolysis of feedstocks and to a lesser extent production of bioethanol fuels in general and fermentation of hydrolysates are the key influential research areas while for the second research front, bioethanol-based biohydrogen fuels and bioethanol sensors are the key influential research areas. Influential research in this field has also intensified for feedstocks of wood biomass, cellulose, lignin, grass biomass, and bioethanol fuels and to a lesser extent lignocellulosic biomass at large, starch feedstock residues, starch feedstocks, biomass at large, and sugar feedstock residues. However, it is essential to develop efficient incentive structures for the primary stakeholders to enhance research in this field. Although there have been a large number of review papers on bioethanol fuels, there has been no review of the most-cited 25 articles in this field. Thus, this chapter presents a review of these most-cited 25 articles. Then, it discusses the key findings of these highly influential papers and comments on future research priorities in this field.
