Pretreatment of green tidal Ulva and Enteromorpha (CHLOROPHYTA) for efficient bioethanol production

Abstract

Many scientists are making tremendous efforts to produce biofuels from renewable biomass stimulated by oil peak and global warming. It has been reported that bioethanol production through traditional cellulosic feedstock has higher energy density and lower hygroscopicity. Ethanol production using crops would not be economically viable in land-limited countries, like Korea and also be one of the major causes of food crisis all over the world. Here, we present environmentally and economically friendly pretreatment technologies to produce high quantity and high-concentration of ethanol using extracted glucose from green tidal macroalgae, Ulva and Enteromorpha species. The results demonstrate a way to produce bioethanol from pretreated macroalgae by maximizing a quantity of microbial fermentation and also minimizing a time for fermentation. Especially, this study contributes to industrial scale production of ethanol from macroalgae without microbes-based pretreatments, and to reuse marine bio indicator of pollution as a new renewable feedstock instead of traditional food crops.