Front Matter

 

181

6

First Principles of Pretreatment and Cracking Biomass

to Fundamental Building Blocks

6.1 Introduction Amir Daraei Garmakhany and Somayeh Sheykhnazari

(^1) Buali Sina University, Toyserkan Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Department of Food Science and Technology,
Hamedan, Iran
(^2) Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Department of Wood and Paper Technology, Gorgan,
Iran
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen, 1956–1968

7.2 Introduction

The growth of population has increased the need for food and energy, but unfortunately

a large number of people in the world encounter shortage of food and energy because

of inadequacy of food sources and fossil fuels.

According to the aforementioned reason, nowadays, preparing food materials and

energy are two principal challenges in the world. The human used biotechnology and

nuclear sciences to supply these needs. He has increased agricultural productions

by using racial modification and repellence of plant diseases. Production of fuel and

energy using nuclear energy is not accessible to all countries. Biotechnology (fermen-

tation technology) can prepare many needs of society especially energy. Fermentation

process requires several factors, including special microorganisms, media, culture,

and optimal process (time, temperature, and feeding rate) conditions. Since the basic

part of fermentation process costs is media culture, one of the goals in fermentation

process is using low-cost media. Carbon is the energy source of media culture, and so

the cost of media is mostly related to it. For this reason, the cost of the fermentation

process decreases by using inexpensive carbon sources. Lignocellulosic materials are

most abundant renewable materials on the earth (1× 1010 million tons per year). They

broadly comprise cellulose and hemicelluloses, which are composed of sugar units.

Consequently, they can be used as a low-cost substrates to prepare the required energy

in fermentation processes. Lignin can be used to produce chemicals or directly to

supply thermal energy via combustion. The main sources of lignocellulosic materials

consist of tree wood (softwood and hardwood), agricultural wastes, algae, sulfite

wastes of paper-making factories, and so on. To utilize lignocellulosic materials several

factors, including the annual production rate, accessibility, the costs of transportation

Introduction to Renewable Biomaterials: First Principles and Concepts,First Edition.

Edited by Ali S. Ayoub and Lucian A. Lucia.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.