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Concise review on ethanol production from food waste: development and sustainability

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Abstract

The development of sustainable bioethanol fuel production from food waste has increasingly become an attractive topic. Food waste is recognized as the most available and costless feedstock. Therefore, ethanol production has been adopted as cost-efficient and an ecological way for FW disposal. This paper reviewed the microorganisms utilized for ethanol fermentation, the effect of enzymatic hydrolysis on ethanol concentration, optimization of accurate process parameters, and recycling of huge volumes of stillage for ethanol production towards reducing any incurred environmental burdens and minimizing the cost. The statistical tools which may enhance the process efficiency had been presented. Also, the perspective and the future development were introduced. All these aimed to fully utilize the food waste and also reduce the cost for side-product in this process; proper operation conditions and the control methods for stillage recycling were considered as the methods to improve ethanol fermentation from food waste.

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Funding

The work was supported by the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (2013DFG92600) and the National Scientific Funding of China (51008020, 51378003), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Mashair Anwar Saeed, Hongzhi Ma, Siyuan Yue & Qunhui Wang

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Resource-oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants, Beijing, 100083, China

    Mashair Anwar Saeed, Hongzhi Ma, Siyuan Yue & Qunhui Wang

  3. Department of Biomedical, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 2901 Woodside Drive, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, USA

    Maobing Tu

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  1. Mashair Anwar Saeed
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  2. Hongzhi Ma
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  5. Maobing Tu
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Correspondence to Hongzhi Ma.

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Anwar Saeed, M., Ma, H., Yue, S. et al. Concise review on ethanol production from food waste: development and sustainability. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 28851–28863 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2972-4

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