Biomass Pretreatment for Enhancement of Biogas Production

Biomass is a renewable energy source developed from living or recently living plant and animal materials, which can be used as fuel. The main components present in biomass are polymers such as carbohydrate, protein, cellulose, lignin and fat. Biogas is produced when the biomass is anaerobically degraded by microorganisms. The process of anaerobic digestion (AD) takes place in four steps: hydrolysis, acidogenesis, acetogenesis, and methanogenesis. The hydrolysis step is rate limiting due to the presence of complex polymers in biomass. Pretreatment is a process in which the biomass is made ready for microbial attack. This pretreatment can be physical operations such as communition, irradiation etc.; chemical treatment with alkali, acids, wet oxidation etc.; biological pretreatment, by fungi or enzymes; or a combination of these processes. During the pretreatment process, the compact structure of biomass is disrupted and exposed which.