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The fossil fuels, besides being polluting energy sources, are depleting at faster rate with the economic development. Therefore, development of an alternate renewable and clean energy source has gained serious attention worldwide. According to the feedstock and technology used, the biofuel technologies have been categorized as the first-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation biofuels. The traditional first-generation biofuels were derived from vegetable oil and other crops. However, they have serious economic and environmental constraints attached besides putting up competition to agri-food production. In contrast, second- and third-generation biofuels derived from biomass and algae, respectively, are far more energy efficient and sustainable at the ecological and societal level. Furthermore, omics approaches are being used for developing the fourth-generation biofuels from engineered organisms and are believed to be a potential renewable, cost effective, and cleaner energy source to meet the global energy demand. This chapter describes the recent technological developments for making the biofuel production economically competitive and environment friendly. |
