The contribution of biomass to the world’s energy supply is presently estimated to be around 10% to 14%. The conversion of biomass to biofuels can be achieved primarily via biochemical and thermochemical processes. Recently, the use of thermochemical processes as pyrolysis and gasification has received great attention. The biomass composition and form of process conduction can affect greatly the efficiency of conversion for both gasification and pyrolysis. This review compiles recent thermochemical studies using several kinds of biomass to obtain biofuels and, additionally, it presents a brief description of main gasification and pyrolysis processes employed. Publications in Patent database also were reported and compiled.

Recent studies have shown that butanol is a potential gasoline replacement that can also be blended in significant quantities with conventional diesel fuel. However, biotechnological production of butanol has some challenges such as low butanol titer, high cost feedstocks and product inhibition. The present work reviewed the technical and economic feasibility of the main technologies available to produce biobutanol. The latest studies integrating continuous fermentation processes with efficient product recovery and the use of mathematical models as tools for process scale-up, optimization and control are presented.