Ethanol production from date wastes: Adapted technologies, challenges, and global potential

Abstract Each year different agricultural plants are cultivated in the world for human nutrition, livestock feed, and industrial applications, a considerable part of which is lost to sub-standard planting and harvesting, incorrect processing and pests. This work aimed to study the potential use of date wastes as a source of bioethanol production as well as its adapted conversion technologies and economic assessment of fuel production process in the world. About 10–50% of produced dates are wasted annually, depending on the country, which could be converted to biofuels. In the present study, the latest technologies are introduced and updated for ethanol production from date wastes (DWs). Three scenarios of ethanol production and electricity generation (EEG), ethanol production and heat generation (EHG), ethanol production and bio-material making (EBM) from DWs were designed. Moreover, three types of primary energy (ethanol, electricity, and CNG) can be considered for DWs. For this, direct sugar fermentation, direct gasification, pre-treatment-hydrolysis-fermentation (SHF), and pre-treatment-saccharification/co-fermentation-fermentation (SSF) can be effective. Accordingly, the worldwide annual potential is 3260 million litres of ethanol. According to our estimation, the cost of ethanol production from the date feedstock varies between 0.34 and 0.68 USD per litre, depending on the country.