Biomethanol production from renewable resources: a sustainable approach

The abundant availability of various kinds of biomass and their use as feedstock for the production of gaseous and liquid biofuels has been considered a viable, eco-friendly, and sustainable mode of energy generation. Gaseous fuels like biogas and liquid fuels, e.g., bioethanol, biodiesel, and biomethanol derived from biological sources, have been theorized to produce numerous industrially relevant organic compounds replacing the traditional practice of employing fossil fuels as a raw material. Among the biofuels explored, biomethanol has shown promising potential to be a future product addressing multifactorial issues concerning sustainable energy and associated process developments. The presented mini-review has explored the importance and application of biomethanol as a value-added product. The biomethanol production process was well reviewed by focusing on different thermochemical and biochemical conversion processes. Syngas and biogas have been acknowledged as potential resources for biomethanol synthesis. The emphasis on biochemical processes is laid on the principal metabolic pathways and enzymatic machinery involved or used by microbial physiology to convert feedstock into biomethanol under normal temperature and pressure conditions. The advantage of minimizing the cost of production by utilizing suggested modifications to the overall process of biomethanol production that involves metabolic and genetic engineering in microbial strains used in the production process has been delineated. The challenges that exist in our current knowledge domain, impeding large-scale commercial production potential of biomethanol at a cost-effective rate, and strategies to overcome them along with its future scenarios have also been pointed out.