The biofuel and food price debate involves wide-ranging views, and is a long-standing, controversial one in the literature.
Corn, wheat, and sugar beet can also require high agricultural inputs in the form of fertilizers, which limit the greenhouse gas reductions that can be achieved.
[3] However, its production can serve as an obstacle because it's viewed as not cost-effective as well as modern technology being insufficient for its continual creation.
[4] The problem that second-generation biofuel processes are addressing is to extract useful feedstocks from this woody or fibrous biomass, which is predominantly composed of plant cell walls.
Lignocellulosic ethanol is made by extracting sugar molecules from the carbohydrates using enzymes, steam heating, or other pre-treatments.
Lignin can be burned as a carbon neutral fuel to produce heat and power for the processing plant and possibly for surrounding homes and businesses.
Thermochemical processes (liquefaction) in hydrothermal media can produce liquid oily products from a wide range of feedstock[5] that has a potential to replace or augment fuels.
Carbon-based materials can be heated at high temperatures in the absence (pyrolysis) or presence of oxygen, air and/or steam (gasification).
Bio-oil typically requires significant additional treatment to render it suitable as a refinery feedstock to replace crude oil.
The capability to handle a wide range of materials make hydrothermal liquefaction viable for producing fuel and chemical production feedstock.
[7] Feedstocks are energy crops, agricultural and forest residues, food industry and municipal biowaste and other biomass containing sugars.
Common lignocellulosic energy crops include wheat straw, Arundo donax, Miscanthus spp., short rotation coppice poplar and willow.
An operating lignocellulosic ethanol production plant is located in Canada, run by Iogen Corporation.
The Swedish specialty cellulose mill Domsjö Fabriker in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden develops a biorefinery using Chemrec's black liquor gasification technology.
In the UK, companies like INEOS Bio and British Airways are developing advanced biofuel refineries, which are due to be built by 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Under favourable economic conditions and strong improvements in policy support, NNFCC projections suggest advanced biofuels could meet up to 4.3 per cent of the UK's transport fuel by 2020 and save 3.2 million tonnes of CO2 each year, equivalent to taking nearly a million cars off the road.
Shell continues to explore multiple pathways to find a commercial solution for the production of advanced biofuels on an industrial scale, but the company will NOT pursue the project it has had under development to build a larger scale cellulosic ethanol facility in southern Manitoba.
The companies who will be participating in building of 2G biofuel plants are Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), HPCL and BPCL.
[36] In May 2018, the Government of India unveiled a biofuel policy wherein a sum of INR 5,000 crores was allocated to set-up 2G biorefineries.
Indian oil marketing companies were in a process of constructing 12 refineries with a capex of INR 10,000 crores.