Novozymes vs KL Energy: Who's the Best?

Background: This is a first round, International Regional match-up between #5 seed Novozymes and #12 seed KL Energy in the 2011 Transformative Technologies tourney, from Biofuels Digest.

Voting: Open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

The winner gets: Most votes advances to the second-round (round of 32), and a shot at the Biofuels Sweet Sixteen.

The loser: Goes home.

Laurels: Novozymes is the 7th ranked company in the 2010-11 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. DSM is currently ranked #44.

The match-up: Two key players in the development of cellulosic ethanol.

Novozymes’ core technology for the biofuels industry is enzymes that break down different types of feedstock into fermentable sugars for conversion into ethanol.  Within this area, Novozymes develops solutions for two distinct types of ethanol technology: cellulosic ethanol and starch-based ethanol. Novozymes cellulosic ethanol work is the largest endeavor the company has ever undertaken, with over 150 scientists dedicated to the effort.  Not only is Novozymes’ developing and offering the leading enzyme solutions for cellulosic ethanol technology, but we have also expanded our research focus into optimizing the pretreatment, hydrolysis and fermentation process steps.

KL Energy is developing a thermal-mechanical pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis process that works with various non-food feedstocks, including several types of woody biomass and bagasse.  Last year, KL Energy and Petrobras announced that they have entered into a Joint Development Agreement to jointly optimize KLE’s proprietary cellulosic ethanol process technology for sugarcane bagasse feedstock. As part of this agreement, The companies also said that they will develop a 4 Mgy bagasse-based cellulosic ethanol project that will be co-located with a Petrobras-owned sugarcane mill, which will come online in 2013.