Berkeley Lab and Sandia researchers streamline woody biomass to liquid biofuel process

April 14, 2021 |

In California, teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories have collaborated to develop a streamlined and efficient process for converting woody plant matter like forest overgrowth and agricultural waste – material that is currently burned either intentionally or unintentionally – into liquid biofuel. Their research was published recently in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

The scientists used non-toxic chemicals, commercially available enzymes, and a specially engineered strain of yeast to convert wood into ethanol in a single reactor, or “pot.” Furthermore, a subsequent technological and economic analysis helped the team identify the necessary improvements required to reach ethanol production at $3 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) via this conversion pathway. The work is the first-ever end-to-end process for ethanol production from woody biomass featuring both high conversion efficiency and a simple one-pot configuration. (As any cook knows, one-pot recipes are always easier than those requiring multiple pots, and in this case, it also means lower water and energy usage.)

In a complementary study, a team at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a team fine-tuned the one-pot process so that it could convert California-based woody biomass – such as pine, almond, walnut, and fir tree debris – with the same level of efficiency as existing methods used to convert herbaceous biomass, even when the input is a mix of different wood types.

These studies indicate that woody biomass can be efficiently broken down and converted into advanced biofuels in an integrated process that is cost-competitive with starch-based corn ethanol. These technologies can also be used to produce “drop-in” biofuels that are chemically identical to compounds already present in gasoline and diesel.

The next steps in this effort is to develop, design, and deploy the technology at the pilot scale, which is defined as a process that converts 1 ton of biomass per day. The Berkeley Lab teams are working with Aemetis, an advanced renewable fuels and biochemicals company based in the Bay Area, to commercialize the technology and launch it at larger scales once the pilot phase is complete.

Category: Research

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