Alternative Fuels

Nowadays, a wide range of value-added fine chemicals, alternative biofuels and eco-friendly polymeric materials can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass sources via thermochemical, biological or catalytic routes in the biorefinery. For the sustainable production of biofuels, abundant, easy accessible and renewable biomass based feedstock has an important key role to replace petroleum oil in the production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels for the transportation sector with a zero carbon footprint. The biofuel can be defined as the solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels which are predominantly obtained from these biomass based raw materials. However, the pre-treatment, production and purification processes differ greatly based on the feedstock type, used technol ogy and desired fuel type. Thus, to eliminate the contradiction in terms, biofuels are classified from first-to fourth-generation at the present time. This chapter review the several liquid biofuel type along with production methods, technologies and feedstock types based on that generation classification.