Role of Catalysis in Biofuels Production Process – A Review

In the past few years, biofuels have emerged as renewable alternative to encounter global energy requirements in a greener way. Biomass is a sustainable cost-effective natural resource with wide diversity for conversion to biofuel such as biodiesel, biogas, bio-oil, biohydrogen, etc. via various chemical, thermal, or biochemical routes. Catalysis plays a pivotal role to convert biomass to biofuels, but conventional catalysts show a lot of short comings. To address these problems, a novel nanocatalysts approach is considered to be the most promising option. Nanocatalysts offer extremely high surface area, enhanced selectivity, better stability and catalytic activity at an atomic and molecular level in comparison to bulk catalysis. Here an insight about the limitation of traditional catalysts, the importance of nanocatalysts, various types of nanocatalysts, and their application in conversion of biomass to biofuel is given. It emphasizes the state-of-the-art developments in terms of catalysis and catalytic processes that are anticipated to play a crucial role in biomass conversion to fuel are emphasized and the chemistry behind nanocatalyst design for biofuel production and reduction of inhibitory effect is highlighted.