The conventional means of producing ethanol from food sources like corn and
sugarcane is, commercially, highly successful. In contrast, the production of
ethanol from nonfood biomass (ligno-cellulose), although feasible in principle,
is not widely used. More processing is required to make the sugar monomers
in ligno-cellulose feedstock available to the microorganisms that produce
ethanol by fermentation. However, production from food sources, even though
it strains the food supply and is wasteful, is widespread.
Consider that only 50% of the dry kernel mass is transformed into ethanol,
while the remaining kernel and the entire stock of the corn plant, regardless
that it is grown using cultivation energy and incurs expenses, remains unutilized.
It is difficult to ferment this part, which contains ligno-cellulose mass,
so it is discarded as waste. Alternative methods are being developed to convert
the cellulosic components of biomass into ethanol so that they can also be
utilized for transport fuel