Biomass to Fuels: Thermo-chemical or Bio-chemical Conversion?

Abstract

Copyright: © 2012 Chen Y. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The combination of economic and environmental factors, such as soaring crude oil prices, diminishing oil reserves, and changing climate, has created global interest for developing renewable energy sources that could replace fossil fuels [1,2]. Fuels produced from renewable resources such as lignocellulosic biomass have been considered the best potential alternative fuels for replacing fossil fuels in the future. Currently, there are two routes for converting biomass into fuels or other useful bio-products: a) bio-chemical process and b) thermochemical process. These two have been intensively studied. But which process is preferred for commercialization in terms of technical and economical feasibility?