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Paper Mill Sludge as a Potential Feedstock for Microbial Ethanol Production

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Microbial Strategies for Techno-economic Biofuel Production

Part of the book series: Clean Energy Production Technologies ((CEPT))

Abstract

Health and environmental impacts of fossil fuel utilization have urged the need to find alternative bioresources that could act as renewable source of energy called as biofuels. Bioethanol is currently the most produced biofuel. First-generation feedstocks result in food–fuel competition; hence, second-generation feedstocks are mostly preferred, which consist of lignocellulosic biomass, but they have a costly and difficult pre-treatment techniques that will add up to the total cost of the production of bioethanol. Pulp and paper industry is one among the fast-growing industries which simultaneously generates large amount of residues which are disposed in landfills. These residues are wastes from paper making that is rich in monosaccharides or even polysaccharides besides lignin and hence can be used as a proper feedstock for bioethanol production which requires lesser pre-treatment. It acts as zero or negative feedstock cost and has the potential for the production of cellulosic ethanol. The aim is to cover the recent developments and key challenges for the successful introduction of paper mill sludge in the bioethanol production industry. The covered subjects are sustainability of biofuel, paper-making process, Indian scenario of paper mills, and environmental impacts of paper mill sludge along with the pre-treatments employed on paper mill sludge for bioethanol production.

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Correspondence to Subramaniapillai Niju .

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Niju, S., Vijayan, V. (2020). Paper Mill Sludge as a Potential Feedstock for Microbial Ethanol Production. In: Srivastava, N., Srivastava, M., Mishra, P.K., Gupta, V.K. (eds) Microbial Strategies for Techno-economic Biofuel Production. Clean Energy Production Technologies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7190-9_2

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