Process Development of Fermentable Cellulosic Sugars from Biomass for Biofuels and Chemical Production

The recent volatility of petroleum prices is stimulating the biorefining industry to diversify its raw material feedstock, using a broad-based sugar platform technology. Corn silage and energy crops such as sweet sorghum are widely recognized as the promising high-volume, low-cost lignocellulosic feedstocks from which to derive C5- and C6-rich sugar streams that can be bioconverted into biofuels and chemicals.

This presentation will review Sweetwater Energy’s overall approach and concept of integrating a decentralize model, whereby a modular, feedstock-flexible bioprocessing machine pretreats and processes ligocellulosic biomass, and generates adequate quantities of C5 and C6 sugar-rich streams at the biomass-generation site. The sugars are then transferred to a regional refining site for the production of biofuels. This talk will highlight: 1) the importance of innovative biomass harvesting and storage technologies to efficiently and economically transfer ensiled biomass from the field to the bioprocessing site, 2) characterization of the physical and chemical properties that enable optimum  bioconversion process, 3) specific pretreatment conditions and various process strategies for deriving streams rich in C6 and C5 sugars for biofuels production, and 4) review recent advances made at Sweetwater Energy in enhancing and improving the ability to process and ferment a wide range of pretreated biomass into ethanol chemicals and advanced fuels, such as bio-jet fuel.