Finns develop wood-to-butanol process

In Finland, researchers at Aalto University have discovered a method to produce butanol from wood biomass using microbes. The university says that when wood biomass is boiled in a mixture of water, alcohol and sulphur dioxide, all parts of the wood – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – are separated into clean fractions.

The cellulose can be used to make paper, nanocellulose or other products, while the hemicellulose is efficient microbe raw material for chemical production. Thus, the advantage of this new process is that no parts of the wood sugar are wasted.