A technical review on thermochemical pathways for production of energy from corncob residue. (March 2023) - Krishna Koundinya, Kota
Graphical abstract: Highlights: Maize production due to its many climate friendly properties have been center of research and development in terms of yield, water per hectare requirement, and so forth. Out of agricultural stubble waste, corncob showed highest potential for beneficiation amongst traditional cash crops. Corncob beneficiation products and their applications span from bio fuels to mattress, with over 3500 products. With processes such as gasification, pyrolysis, combustion and so forth, we can use this agricultural waste product for energy generation. With applications such as bio-oil, ethanol blending, poultry feed, bio char, methanol, and so on maize was found to be the answer to many global problems. Abstract: Increased global energy consumption and energy generation constraints using non-renewable energy sources have stressed countries and major industries to practice and develop cleaner, sustainable, readily available and predictable source of energy. On the other hand, agricultural waste or stubble burning presents a major problem for developing countries like India as it alone produces 516 million tons of agricultural waste in the year 2017-2018, out of which 116 million tons waste was burnt producing 176.1 Mt Carbon dioxide, 10 Mt of Carbon monoxide, and other harmful greenhouse gases. Though 13% of India's total energy is produced by the biomass, a lot of scope and potential in waste biomass is still left unexplored. Research and development in biomass (agricultural waste) conversion to energy is the potential solution to both problems. Out of all agricultural waste biomass, corncob was the center of research for this review paper. This review paper covers global and Indian scenario in the generation of corn cob, its beneficiation and uses in multiple industries, characteristics of corn cob, technologies available and used for the biomass conversion, limitations faced by the industry in corn cob's beneficiation, future potential developments, pledged goals and projected targets.