Ionic Liquid Pretreatment Based Robust Ligno-Cellulosic Sugar Platform

The talk will report on the successful sugar platform developed by SuGanit Systems Inc. and its research collaborator, The University of Toledo. Over the past five years, the collaborators have successfully developed a technology platform to produce sugars in a robust and economically viable manner from ligno-cellulosic biomass. The enabling technology is Ionic Liquid (IL) pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis. IL pretreatment enables rapid hydrolysis with high sugar yields. The pretreatment does not lead to the production of inhibitors, which usually require a conditioning step. The pretreatment is effective on a variety of feedstocks, including corn stover, wheat straw, switch grass, poplar and pine, to name a few. The hydrolysate sugars have been used to produce alcohols as well as organic acids. The presentation will emphasize the various aspects critical to successful scale-up of this unique and facile IL-pretreatment-based technology platform.