A comparative study on the effect of biological and chemical pretreatment on cotton spinning wastes for bioethanol production

Abstract

Energy is one of the key factors to measure the economy and societal well-being of a developing country. At present, most of the world countries are dependent on fossil fuels derived petrol, diesel, etc. to meet their energy demand. This state of dependency will be continuing for next few decades due to a vital part performance by fossil fuels. However, hydrocarbon-based conventional or fossil fuel resources are non-renewable, causing pollution and releasing green-house gases (GHG). In addition, unforeseen escalation of fuel prices affects the economical balance of countries, specifically the developing countries. It is also expected that the world s total conventional oil reserves would have been depleted by 2030 due to the rapid growth of global demand on fossil fuels. Hence, searching for an alternative fuel source is the major focus to substitute conventional fuels. Bioethanol is one of the major replacements to conventional Petro-based fuels. Ethanol is a renewable energy source, non-pollutant, omits GHG emissions and virtually inexhaustible. In the past two decades, bioethanol production from various agro-industrial wastes, as second-generation biofuel, is an emerging trend to meet the future energy demand. newlineIn the present research work, cotton spinning wastes have been investigated for their potentials to convert in to bioethanol. Since the cellulosic cotton fibres present in the spinning wastes are highly crystalline in nature, the major challenges in the pretreatment would be the reduction of cellulose crystallinity. Pretreatment of cotton spinning wastes was performed by biological and chemical method to remove lignin and to reduce crystallinity newline