Biofuel production food waste

Biofuels rely on organic feedstocks such as plant oil, food wastes and trees but their larger scale and rapid exploitation to meet government targets is stressing large areas of land and associated systems such as water, food production and recreation. A truly sustainable future for biofuels and other eco-system exploitation for industrial value requires a better understanding and more quantitative assessment of a number of critical issues ... 

As discussed in Section 5.2 and shown in Table 5.3, the common substrates used in industrial microbiology will be sufficient for today s industrial microbial production processes, but will be far away from meeting the demands for the production of biofuels and bulk chemicals in future. Further on, it will be necessary to use mainly only those substrates which will not be in competition with food or animal feed. Therefore several alternative raw materials substrates have abeady been discussed in literature, for example, related to selected seeds, to biomass, or to biomass-related industrial by-product and waste streams. 

The number of vehicles driven solely by biofuels will reach a maximum of only 100 million units due to the strong competition between biofuel and food production and to the restricted availability of biomass (as waste) for fuel production. The market share of vehicles driven by pure hydrogen (without a traction battery) will reach 50 million units. This number is limited by the high costs, restricted platinum-group metals availability, and problematic handling and storage of hydrogen, especially in mobile applications. 

Matsakas L, Kekos D, Loizidou M, Christakopoulos P. Utilization of household food waste for the production of ethanol at high dry material content. Biotechnol Biofuels 2014 7(4). 

Living cells may be used to generate a number of useful products food and food ingredients (such as cheese, bread, and wine), antibiotics, biofuels, chemicals (enzymes), and human health care products such as insulin. Organisms are also used to destroy or break down harmful wastes, such as those created by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or to reduce pollution. 

Complex solid wastes, such as wastes from kitchens, food processing, mixed wastes, and municipal wastes, have also been tested as feedstock for biofuel production (Ntaikou et al., 2010). 

Animal fats (mainly lard, taUow, and chicken), insects, soapstocks, or microorganisms for oil production (eg, microbial oil from yeast, microalgae, molds, bacteria, and cyanobacteria) were compared as cheap sources of biomass for renewable biofuel production by the author and her coworkers in 2014 and can be consulted (Pinzi et al., 2014). Biodiesel production from microbial oil, food waste, or algae, among others, as well as challenging techniques for sustainable processing, is covered later in this book. 

Huang, H., Singh, V., Qureshi, N., 2015c. Butanol production from food waste a novel process for producing sustainable energy and reducing enviromnental pollution. Biotechnology for Biofuels 8, 147. 

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