Preface

Chapter 8 **Glycoside Hydrolases in Plant Cell Wall Proteomes: Predicting**

Chapter 9 **Biogas Production Plants: A Methodological Approach for Occupational Health and Safety Improvement 183**

Biancamaria Pietrangeli and Roberto Lauri

Chapter 10 **Non-Edible Vegetable Oils as Renewable Resources for**

**Transformation Processes 165**

and Zahira Yaakob

**VI** Contents

**in Thailand 217**

Chapter 12 **Biofuels from Microalgae 239**

**Industrial Wastes 251** Pengchong Zhang

Swapan Chakrabarty

Warangkana Jutidamrongphan

Archana Tiwari and Thomas Kiran

Chapter 13 **Biogas Recovery from Anaerobic Digestion of Selected**

Chapter 14 **Jatropha Curcas L. Biomass Waste and Its Utilization 273**

Sri Rizki Putri Primandari, A.K.M. Aminul Islam, Zahira Yaakob and

**Functions That Could Be Relevant for Improving Biomass**

Maria Juliana Calderan-Rodrigues, Juliana Guimarães Fonseca, Hélène San Clemente, Carlos Alberto Labate and Elisabeth Jamet

**Biodiesel Production: South-East Asia Perspective 201** Abul Kalam Mohammad Aminul Islam, Sri Rizki Putri Primandari

Chapter 11 **Sustainable Waste Management and Waste to Energy Recovery**

The worldwide consumption of fossil fuel continues to increase at unsustainable levels, which will lead to progressive scarcity, if immediate and innovative measures are not taken for its sustainable use. This scarcity necessitates the development of renewable and sustainable alter‐ natives for fossil fuels. A possible solution to today's energy challenges can be provided by biofuels. This book intends to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the cur‐ rent status and the future implications of biofuels.

Over the years, it has been observed that grain-based ethanol production is not environmen‐ tally sustainable. This led to the exploitation of lignocellulosic biomass from perennial grasses as well as microalgae for biofuel production. Perennial grasses can be grown on marginal lands, while microalgae have no requirement for land and can be easily cultivated in wastewa‐ ters. The need for better biomass source and recycling of waste has also led to the utilization of non-edible oils from conversion to biofuel. Initiation of waste-to-energy programs, which uti‐ lize anaerobic digestion to convert industrial and residential waste into biofuel, is another ex‐ ample of recycling to create energy and will also be helpful in creating the job opportunities, elevating the environmental merits, and preventing the monoculture of fuel resources. Recent‐ ly, biohydrogen and biohythane seem to be promising future energy carriers due to their po‐ tentially higher conversion efficiency and low-pollutant generation.

However, in order to make biofuels a feasible alternative to satisfy market demand, strategic improvements in the areas of supply chain management need to be made. Handling and feeding of materials represent a substantial challenge in biomass feedstock supply systems and have been a primary factor causing pioneer industrial biorefineries to struggle to achieve their pro‐ duction targets. There is also a need to develop effective, responsive and responsible safety standard and to assess the risks such as biohazard, fires and potentially explosive atmospheres for biorefineries. This will improve public trust in the new biofuel generation plants. There is also a need to emphasize on the importance of developing models that are crucial to the design and performance of combustion engines and cover multicomponent fuel atomization, heating and evaporation modeling, which will improve engine sustainability and reduce emissions.

Such aptly and comprehensive information covered in this book will directly enhance both basic and applied research in biofuels and will particularly be useful for students, scientists, breeders, growers, ecologists, industrialists and policy makers. It will be a valuable reference point to improve biofuels in the areas of ecologically and economically sustainable bioenergy research.

> **Dr. Madhugiri Nageswara-Rao** Department of Biology New Mexico State University, USA

> **Dr. Jaya R. Soneji** Department of Entomology Plant Pathology and Weed Science New Mexico State University, USA

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Bioenergy from Perennial Grasses**

**Bioenergy from Perennial Grasses**

Claudia Santibáñez Varnero, Marcela Vargas Urrutia

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.74014

In recent years, the establishment of perennial grasses as energy crops has emerged as a very viable option mainly due to their comparative ecological advantages over annual energy crops. Nonwoody biomass fuels have a great potential to replace fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, their application in small-scale combustion appliances for heat production is often associated with increased operational problems such as slagging in the bottom ash or deposit formation, as well as elevated gaseous and particulate matter emission levels. To mitigate these problems, scope and limitation of blending raw materials owing to critical fuel composition with less problematic biomasses have been systematically studied during combustion experiments in a commercially available small-scale combustion appliance. Apart from traditional use, perennial rhizomatous grasses display several positive attributes as energy crops because of their high productivity and low demand for nutrient inputs, consequent to the recycling of nutrients by their rhizomes and resistance to biotic as well as abiotic stresses. Therefore, they are used to generate heat and electricity. In addition, grasses appear to be an economically and environmentally appropriate fuel for generating some local energy in rural areas. This chapter gives an overview on species characteristics, their soil-climate requirements, cultivation technology, yielding, and energy characteristics of lignocellulosic biomass of giant miscanthus (*Miscanthus × giganteus*), reed canary grass (*Phalaris arundinacea* L.), switchgrass (*Panicum virgatum* L.), and giant

**Keywords:** bioenergy, biomass, grasses, giant miscanthus, reed canary grass,

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.74014

reed (*Arundo donax* L.).

switchgrass, giant reed, biomass yield

Claudia Santibáñez Varnero,

Marcela Vargas Urrutia and

and Sebastián Vargas Ibaceta

Sebastián Vargas Ibaceta

**Abstract**
