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 production in a biorefinery context. However, it is necessary to pretreat the biomass to enhance the yield of the bioethanol prior to bioethanol fuel production from the feedstocks through the hydrolysis of the biomass and fermentation of the resulting hydrolysates. One of the most studied feedstocks for bioethanol fuels has been the waste biomass. The research in the field of second generation waste biomass-based bioethanol fuels has intensified in this context in the key research fronts of the pretreatment and hydrolysis of the waste biomass, and to a lesser extent, fermentation of the waste biomass-based hydrolysates, and the production and evaluation of the second generation waste biomass-based bioethanol fuels. The research in this field has also intensified for the feedstocks of the residual starch feedstocks such as corn stover and wheat straw, lignocellulosic biomass at large, and to a lesser extent, industrial wastes such as glycerol and residual sugar feedstocks such as sugarcane bagasse. However, it is essential to develop efficient incentive structures for the primary stakeholders to enhance research in this field. Although there has been a number of review papers on waste biomass-based 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 the future research priorities in this field.
