Secondary metabolites a potential improvement for the economy of second generation biofuel production

The decreasing prices of oil ($29.44US – feb.2016) and natural gas ($1.97US– feb.2016) have significantly restrained the opportunity for the development of the second-generation biofuel industry.Numerous investigations focus on improving processes in order to improve the yield of biofuels. However, the latter being a commodity submitted to a strong competition by the fossil fuel industry, there is strong necessity to find other approaches allowing getting more revenues per tonne of converted biomass. Furthermore, despite the fact that the price of fossil fuels is decreasing, biomass still requires to be transported over long distances to reach a centralized conversion facility, thus, it is of outmost importance to get the most of this renewable feedstock.Secondary metabolites may represent an interesting way to generate complementary value to biofuels production. Extraction of secondary metabolites can 1) improve processes by removing undesirable compounds thus purifying the raw material (as an example by removing fermentation inhibitors) and 2) add an increased value by recovering high value compounds that could represent additional values as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or food additives.Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract.