Bioenergy PROFITS Principles: Obtain Vital Information — looking at Mascoma, Amyris, Virent, LS9 and Qteros

Cellulosic Ethanol – Let me count the ways….

In this new series of articles, Biofuels Digest, takes a more detailed exploration of bioprocessing technology for cellulosic ethanol.  Over the next few installments, Dr. Rosalie Lober, highlights (from her newly released book, Run Your Business like a Fortune 100: 7 Principles for Boosting PROFITS), proven principles to running your business more effectively and illustrates best practices of currently successful bioprocessing companies including Mascoma, Virent, LS9, Amyris and others.

Though this may be a review for some, let’s start at the beginning and describe the process of turning cellulose into biofuel.  Obtaining this vital information, one of our Bioenergy PROFITS Principles,  will help to clearly understand the mission and miracle that bioprocessing technology companies bring to the world of climate change and renewable energy.

• Clarify the challenge

• Know the alternatives

Turning cellulose into ethanol fuel is similar to Rumplestilskin turning straw into gold.

Some call ethanol “green gold.”  Researchers can now transform straw and other plant wastes, into cellulosic ethanol. While chemically identical to the ethanol produced from corn or soybeans, cellulose ethanol has energy content up to three times higher than corn ethanol and emits a much lower level of greenhouse gases.

The first attempt at commercialization of ethanol was in Germany in 1898 with a process involving acid hydrolysis of wood.  More recent technological developments use other chemical and thermochemical processes that improve ethanol yields and also drive down production costs. Cellulosic ethanol has the potential to substantially reduce our consumption of petroleum gasoline. Major companies and research organizations are also realizing the potential. Shell Oil has predicted “the global market for biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol will grow to exceed $10 billion by 2012.”

Clarify the challenge

The only way solve a complex problem is to clarify the challenge or opportunity.  By getting to the source of the dilemma, insights can surface.  For those in the scientific arena, known chemical processes may work, yet the scientists know obstacles will exist until the discovery of new chemicals and processes arise. Years of research, trial and error and capital expenditures may finally result in new findings and improvements in technologies, which can create a watershed of revelations – long sought for.

Within the past few years, watershed discoveries are surfacing in the biofuels field, particularly in the linking of a variety of feedstocks to ethanol production.

Conventional ethanol and cellulosic ethanol is the same product, but are produced utilizing different feedstocks and processes. Conventional ethanol is derived from grains such as corn and wheat or soybeans. Corn, the predominant feedstock, is converted to ethanol in either a dry or wet milling process. In dry milling operations, liquefied corn starch is produced by heating corn meal with water and enzymes. A second enzyme converts the liquefied starch to sugars, which are fermented by yeast into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Wet milling operations separate the fiber, germ (oil), and protein from the starch before it is fermented into ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol can be produced from a wide variety of cellulosic biomass feedstocks including agricultural plant wastes (corn stover, cereal straws, and sugarcane bagasse), plant wastes from industrial processes (sawdust, paper pulp) and energy crops grown specifically for fuel production, such as switchgrass. Cellulosic biomass is composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin, with smaller amounts of proteins, lipids (fats, waxes and oils) and ash. Roughly, two-thirds of the dry mass of cellulosic materials is present as cellulose and hemicelluloses. Lignin makes up the bulk of the remaining dry mass.

Yeast, used to convert corn to ethanol for centuries, however, cannot easily convert the sugar in cellulose to ethanol without first breaking the chains into simple sugars.  As with grains, processing cellulosic biomass aims to extract fermentable sugars from the feedstock. The challenge is that sugars in cellulose and hemicelluloses are locked in complex carbohydrates called polysaccharides (long chains of monosaccharides or simple sugars). Separating these complex polymeric structures into fermentable sugars is essential to the efficient and economic production of cellulosic ethanol

Know the alternatives

Converting cellulose biomass to ethanol is generally a three step process, which includes a pretreatment of the biomass, which converts the biomass to sugars and then fermentation of the sugars.  There are two approaches to breaking the cellulose chains into simple sugars – thermochemical and biochemical.

Thermochemical conversion involves breaking down the biomass into a mixture of gasses and then converting the gasses into ethanol.  Although thermochemical conversion is a relatively simple and well known technology, it is expensive and requires significant capital and energy expenditures.

Biochemical methods use enzymes to break down the cellulose chains.  An analogy to this is a termite that utilizes enzymes to break wood into sugar.  Other biochemical methods for breaking down cellulose chains can be some varieties bacteria and yeast which then also ferment the sugar into ethanol.

Companies such as Mascoma, Amyris, Virent, LS9 and Qteros, to name a few, are discovering technologies that shorten the feedstocks to ethanol cycle into two steps.  For example, Mascoma’s transformative technology uses yeast and bacteria to produce ethanol from non-food agricultural and forestry materials sources such as switchgrass, wood, and agricultural waste feedstocks.  Amyris, a company we explored last month, transforms Brazilian cane into ethanol and requires eight times less energy than converting corn to ethanol.  Amyris’ renewable diesel has little sulfur and creates less particulate, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon-exhaust emissions than fossil fuels.

Stay tuned, as we continue discussing bioprocessing technology in the next few installments of Bioenergy PROFITS Principles.

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