1. General introduction to biofuels and bioethanol 2. The need for biofuels in the context of energy consumption 3. More than biofuels: Use ethanol as chemical feedstock 4. Essential process and key barriers for converting plant biomass into biofuel 5. Composition of plant biomass and its impact on pretreatments 6. Pretreatment: Towards effectiveness and sustainability 7. Tiny bugs play big roles: Microorganisms contribution to bioethanol production 8. Overcome saccharification barrier: Advances in hydrolysis technology 9. Strategies on simultaneous fermentation of pentose and hexose 10. Industrial bioethanol production: Status and bottlenecks 11. Ending fossil fuels addiction: Prospects for biofuels
Xin Lu is currently professor, Dean of College of Food Science and Engineering at Northwest A&F University. He studied at Xinjiang University and Northwest A&F University from 1993-2000. In 2004, he gained his PhD at Jiangnan University. After that, he worked as post-doc at Kyoto University (Japan) with key interests on agricultural and food wastes utilization, biomass saccharization, and bioethanol production. In 2009, he was appointed as full associate professor and started his own lab. His group studies various aspects of bioethanol production, e.g. subcritical water pretreatment, closed circuit fermentation, biofuel production using different agricultural wastes, and microbial community dynamics during fermentation. This research results, for example, in increasing knowledge about the clean bioethanol production and in expanding the pool of bioethanol feedstock.