Development and Optimization Process Deriving Fermentable Sugars From Lignocellulosic Application In Biofuels and Chemicals

Ethanol as a liquid transportation fuel is currently produced from various renewable lignocellulosic resources . Ethanol and other advanced biofuels production from cellulosic biomass offer an attractive environmentally sustainable solution. Lignocellulosic biomass consists of a complex network of rich hemi-cellulose and cellulose bound by lignin. The process of converting lignocellulosic biomass to fermentable-ready sugars involves a pretreatment step that disrupts the complex polymer of lignin, cellulose, and hemi-cellulose, making it amenable for enzymatic saccharification. Using a special combination of enzymes on the pretreated biomass, it is possible to extract a variety of C5 and C6 sugars that can be subsequently fermented by yeasts and proprietary  microbes to ethanol, butanol, advanced fuels like jet fuels, and chemicals and bio-plastics. However, one of the challenges in commercializing the biomass-to-biofuels process is, the logistics of biomass collection, supply and processing the material for fermentation

Sweetwater Energy, in Rochester, NY, is developing, designing and fabricating feedstock-flexible, decentralized, modular bioprocessing machines that can be operated at the biomass-collection site. Various pretreatment options, such as auto-hydrolysis, dilute acid, and de-lignification were studied to test the effectiveness of pretreatment that rendered the biomass easy for enzymatic hydrolysis. Small-scale and preliminary data on processing corn stover and sorghum indicate that one can recover sugars from biomass at approximately 70% of theoretical value. The sugar syrups rich in C5 and C6 sugars were tested for ethanol and advanced biofuels production. This presentation will review Sweetwater Energy’s technology and overall approach to process development, and will highlight recent advances made at its R&D site in the cellulosic bioprocessing technology and the conversion to biofuels. The importance and the prospects of developing cost-effective pretreatment and integrated sugar platform technologies for the production of biofuels from biomass will be discussed.