ABSTRACT
The crude oil-based gasoline fuels have been widely used in the transportation sector since the 1920s. However, there have been great public concerns over the adverse environmental and human impact of these fuels. Hence, biomass-based bioethanol fuels have increasingly been used in blending gasoline fuels, in the fuel cells, and in the biochemical production in a biorefinery context. However, it is necessary to pretreat the biomass to enhance the yield of the bioethanol prior to the bioethanol fuel production from starch feedstocks through the hydrolysis of the biomass and fermentation of the resulting hydrolysates, respectively. One of the most-studied feedstocks for the bioethanol fuels has been the starch feedstocks as the first generation feedstocks. The research in the field of the starch feedstock-based bioethanol fuels has intensified in this context in the key research fronts of the evaluation of bioethanol fuels and to a lesser extent production of bioethanol fuels, fermentation of starch feedstock-based hydrolysates, pretreatments and hydrolysis of starch feedstocks, and economics of bioethanol fuels. Further, the corn and to a lesser extent cassava, sorghum, potato, and wheat have been studied intensively in this context. However, it is essential to develop efficient incentive structures for the primary stakeholders to enhance the research in this field. Although there have been a limited number of review papers on the bioethanol fuels from starch feedstocks, there has been no review of the most-cited 25 articles in this field. Thus, this book chapter presents a review of these most-cited 25 articles. Then, it discusses the key findings of these highly influential papers and comments on the future research priorities in this field.
