23. Cellulose Degradation Methods for Biofuel Production

Transport sector is highly dependent on oil and it is responsible for the emission of significant quantities of greenhouse gases. In order to reduce the dependency on fossil energies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Algeria has embarked on an ambitious program for the production of renewable energies. In this context, bioethanol represents an excellent economic and ecological solution. It is produced by alcoholic fermentation from different substrates rich in simple or complex sugar. The production from biomass rich in simple sugars is the easiest method since it does not need any pre-treatment. However, this process is excluded because all used substrates are basic food products. The second way of using non-food substrates rich in complex sugars would be the most suitable, but the production process is more complex because it requires pre-treatment and hydrolysis to release sugars. This paper describes the different methods of degradation of cellulose contained in waste paper. Office paper was collected and hydrolysed according to two methods, the first biological using a fungal enzyme, the second thermochemical using diluted sulfuric acid at high temperature, the two hydrolysed solutions were analysed by HPLC to measure released glucose, and the results showed that the thermochemical method is better by releasing twice the sugar released during biological hydrolysis.