APPLICATIONS:
- Enhancing biomass conversion to increase biofuel production efficiency
ADVANTAGES:
- Increases sugar yields from biomass compared to conventional pretreatment methods
- Prevents physical and chemical transformation of biomass components
- Enables high solvent recovery and recycle rates
BACKGROUND:
Biomass pretreatment is a crucial step in the biochemical conversion process for the production of biofuels. The process uses a distillable protic ionic liquid or distillable solvent, such as alkanolamines, based on their ability to break down the lignin structure and enhance the accessibility of cellulose, and prepares the biomass for efficient enzymatic hydrolysis. However, biomass components can undergo unwanted physical and chemical transformations that can reduce sugar yields.
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION:
JBEI researchers have developed an innovative pretreatment process that adds water into the pretreatment slurry before it is fed into the solvent recovery unit, stabilizing biomass components and preventing the undesirable transformations that typically occur during solvent recovery. This method notably enhances the release of fermentable sugars following saccharification, for example, an increase in sugar release from 49.6% to 81.6% for glucose and from 50.7% to 66.1% for xylose.
The addition of water enhances overall process efficiency, leading to an increased yield of fermentable sugars and efficient solvent recovery and recycling rates. This technology is also adaptable to current production infrastructures, resulting in lower production costs without large implementation investments required.
DEVELOPMENT STAGE:
Validation in laboratory environment
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:
- Hemant Choudhary
- Alberto Rodriguez
- John Gladden
- Blake Simmons