Biofuels and Bioeconomy

The increasing demand of the key products of Bioeconomy can be achieved by increasing the cultivation the crops used for biofuels production. Biotechnology is used to increase the productivity biofuel production by acting as a key technological opportunity of increasing the production. However, biotechnology is always containing many policy, regulation and issues to the Bioeconomy. There are many established bio-based industries of agriculture, food and forest-based industries deals with biotechnology. Our aim is to analysis of the current status of Bioeconomy in the worldwide in recent future and beyond.

Generally second generation biofuels are known as advanced and this has been developed because the production of first generation biofuels has certain limitations. Advanced biofuels can be produced from various types of biomass, fuel crops (such as Jatropha, sugar cane, corn, wheat etc.) and waste materials. Algae fuel or algal biofuel is also considered as advanced alternative to liquid fossil fuels which are produced from energy-rich algae. Many companies and government agencies are continuing their research funding efforts to reduce capital and production costs and make algae biofuel production commercially viable.

Biofuels are produced by simple biochemical processes such as hydrolysis of ligno-cellulosic biomass, esterification and fermentation of agricultural fuel crops and anaerobic digestion like algae. Biofuels can also be produced directly from plants, agricultural, industrial or domestic wastes. Global bioethanol production has been raised by 4.1%, consecutively led by Asia Pacific, South & Central America and North America. Biodiesel production has declined by 4.9% in 2015 in all of the major producing regions. Research is going on to find more suitable biofuel crops and impressing the oil yields of these crops as the current yields need large amounts of agricultural land and fresh water to produce enough biofuels to replace fossil fuel usage entirely.

One of the major reasons for showing interest towards biofuels is to minimize the greenhouse gas and carbonyl emissions and to mitigate the climate change caused by fossil fuels. The greenhouse gases may be emitted by changes of cropland use because of increased biofuels production from one crop to another. In some cases more carbon is generated by converting a land that is used for growing biofuel feedstock to forest than the biofuel production itself. Biofuels also have a vital impact on the biodiversity and the water resources.

Biodiesel is one of the most forms of alternative energy resource similar to fossil diesel. Biodiesel can be produced by simple trans esterification process from hydrogenated vegetable oil, animal fats and waste cooking oil. The largest portion of suitable oil resource comes from fuel crops such as corn, rapeseed, soybean oils, and palm oil or sunflower seeds from which the needed oil is extracted chemically or mechanically. The main advantage of biodiesel use is that it doesn’t produce any carbon in form of CO₂. Biodiesel can be used in pure form or mixed with conventional diesel at any ration in the most diesel engines. It has uses in various fields such as transportation vehicles, railway, aircraft etc.

Bioethanol is the most well-known biofuel, calculating for about 90% of total biofuel usage worldwide. It is produced based on enzymatic fermentation of starchy biomass like sugars or 6-carbon sugars using mostly from carbohydrates including sugar beets, sugar cane, cereal crops, corn, sweet sorghum, cellulosic biomass, potatoes, cassava, and sorghum. Advanced R&D sectors are focusing on new conventional technologies of producing bioethanol from e ligno-cellulosic materials so that the production cost can be minimized. The biofuels market is gradually capturing the automotive industry, where by 2010, 79% of all cars manufactured in Brazil were hybrid cars with a fuel system of bioethanol and gasoline. 22% of all greenhouse gas emission can be avoided by using bioethanol.

Biofuels market is one of the most rapid growing markets in the world bioeconomy. The Bioeconomy can be defined as the sustainable development and conversion of biomass and biofuels into food, industrial products and energy. Renewable biomass means any biological material as a product itself or to be used as feed to produce any bioproducts. Due to global warming, climate change, limitation and increasing cost conventional fossil fuels has turned this aspect as a key challenge for the scientists and economists. The aim of this congress is to draw attention towards the importance of Biofuels & Bioeconomy in the context of natural energy resources in the 21st century, providing opportunity to resolve many answers of the challenges together with environmental preservation.

Bio-based products and processes may produce (intended or unintended) impacts on human society and the environment. These impacts may occur along the entire value chain of bio-based products and can be linked to the production of biomass, to biorefinery (and related) processes, or to the actual characteristics and effects of the new, bio-based products. One single product or process can have several impacts, which are also influenced by factors that are not related to the product or process. Since these impacts are context-specific and can be partly positive and partly negative, it is challenging to state whether the overall impact of a product or process is negative or positive. This chapter presents a typology of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the bioeconomy. It draws on the work that has been carried out within the FP7 project “Systems Analysis Tools Framework for the EU Bio-Based Economy Strategy” (SAT-BBE)2 which aimed at providing a design of a system analyses tool framework to assess and address the short-term and long-term challenges related to the European bioeconomy.

Bio-based industries are industries, which either use renewable resources and/or apply biobased processes in their production processes. Europe has a number of well-established industries, starch and biotechnology to the chemical, eco- and energy industries. Significant increase in economic activity is expected to arise from the innovation potential of industrial biotechnology and biorefineries, which provide the opportunity to develop new biobased industries, transform existing ones, and open new markets for bio-based products.

Biorefining can be termed as to separating biomass from a mixture of various products that possibly undergo through a series of further biological, biochemical, thermodynamic and separation processes. Biorefinery holds advantages of the various components in biomass and their intermediates by producing various products and thus optimizing the value produced from the biomass feedstock. Integrated biorefineries involves various types of feedstock and conversion processes to produce various types of bioproducts with the main focus on the production of biofuels. The high value products from biorefinery increase the profitability and the produces high volume fuels helps to achieve the world energy need as well as avoid greenhouse gas emission.

The bioeconomy can be explained as the industry’s response to the current global challenges in social, environmental, and economic along with the bioproducts, food insecurity, climate change and the shortages of natural resource. In bioeconomy, renewable and naturally produced biological energy resources are used to replace fossil fuels as well as for other bio-based products. From the last decades, the global bioeconomy’s focus has shifted towards the biofuels and bioenergy. The euro bioeconomy already gains a turnover of approximately 2 trillion euro with employs more than 22 million. The recent evolution in the field of biotechnology industry and its application on agriculture and chemical or energy industries are important example of bioeconomic activity.