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Multipurpose Technology in Ethanol Production from Cellulosic Feedstocks

May 23rd, 2011

As ethanol production witnesses a complex series of technical and financial problems, commercial firms have started to devise methods robustly for addressing those issues in a compressed way. Chemtex and Gruppo Mossi and Ghisolfi, have invested significant currency and dedication for the development of the PROESA™ ligno-cellulosic bio-ethanol technology. The scientists have engineered and constructed a pilot facility in Rivalta, Italy where they have developed a unique bio-mass pretreatment and hydrolysis process, for which 11 patent applications have been filed, for transforming cellulosic feedstocks into sugars for conversion into ethanol and/or bio-based chemicals. Some of the key features include Capability to use a large variety of biomass as collected, Unique pre-treatment process that produces high quality and low cost sugar from cellulosic biomass for conversion to ethanol and/or bio-based chemicals, High efficiency in viscosity reduction enzymatic hydrolysis and Energy integration with high efficiency burning of lignin. It is really exciting to watch such  a powerful technology with scope to satisfy and improve multiple tasks technically which in turn carry a profound influence in the flow of money for production.

 

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Cost Effective Enzymes in Processing of Cellulosic Feedstock for Alcohol Generation

May 23rd, 2011

Hydrolytic enzymes are vital preprocessing elements in the production of ethanol but often found to so expensive to apply them in a generous way for transforming an huge quantum of polymeric substances. It has made commercial firms to target enzymes as key bottlenecks and must be evaluated from different sources for cost effective implementation in production process. AE Biofuels is a vertically integrated company developing biofuel solutions for the world’s renewable energy needs on a global basis using patent-pending cellulosic ethanol technology. The key to the company’s strategy is the production of cellulosic ethanol from crop wastes such as corn stover and wheat straw, or energy crops such as switchgrass, sugar cane bagasse and miscanthus. AE Biofuels’ process uses low-cost enzymes with multiple activities that reduce processing costs. The enzymes convert cellulose and hemicellulose to reducing sugars for fermentation into ethanol. AE Biofuels is leading the way in integrating cellulosic ethanol production into starch based processes and increase the efficiency of overall ethanol production. The integrated process results higher alcohol concentration, reduced energy and less water consumption. Any obstruction encountered is now overcome by the intellectual application in the biofuel promotion technologies to harvest the ecological potential.

 

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Technical Constraints for Fermentation-based Ethanol Production

May 23rd, 2011

Ethanol produced by gasification or fermentation is to commercialized for economic benefits but it is facing some peculiar hurdles including ethanol pipeline distribution Issues which requires specialized material designing for effective transport of pure ethanol and costs involved in it, lack of standardization in defining the parameters with magnitude limits for ethanol from biomass feedstocks, necessity for unique coatings and their composition in tanks for ethanol transport, differences in physical properties from conventional fuels may lead to loss of ethanol by volatilization under open temperature conditions, compatibility issues of ethanol with classical engines and lower calorific values of ethanol to liberate sufficient energy.

Scientific professionals from diverse backgrounds are striving to overcome these problems and make it as a fuel with performance on par to classical fuels which would otherwise render ethanol as a second grade optional fuel.

 

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Innovations in Acid Hydrolysis Treatment

May 23rd, 2011

Pretreatment of cellulosic feedstock is a mandatory process in the conditioning of substrates with chemicals including acids and enzymes for the production of soluble sugars from polymers hemicelluose, cellulose, and xylan etc to subsequently use them for catalytic alcohol production.

CleanTech Biofuels, Inc. announced that it has fulfilled its first milestone pursuant to its exclusive worldwide sublicense agreement for technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley for converting cellulose to ethanol. The patented technology initially developed and tested at the University of California, Berkeley utilizes nitric acid for hydrolyzing cellulosic material, rather than sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, for the production of ethanol and other fuels from biomass in municipal solid waste. Sulphuric or hydrochloric acid is typically used in the industry for hydrolyzing biomass; however, CleanTech believes that nitric acid hydrolysis represents the cutting edge of current technology in the cellulosic ethanol industry. CleanTech also obtained a nonexclusive worldwide license to use the technology for all other feedstocks for producing ethanol.

 

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New Category of Microbes for Ethanol Generation

May 23rd, 2011

Microbes are broad category of biological factors carrying tremendous degree of application in any branch of applied biological sciences and its significance in ethanol production by fermentation is of core weightage. Eventhough bacteria and yeasts are the most commonly exploited microbes for processing of biomass substrates, fungus is now emerging as a potential candidate due to its potential features associated with generation of ethanol.

Dyadic International Inc, USA, has been issued a U.S.Patent on the use of enzymes from newly identified and isolated strains of Chrysosporium lucknowense, which when used in combination with other enzymes, demonstrates an extremely high ability to convert lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars like glucose, xylose, arabinose, galactose, mannose, rhamnose, sucrose and fructose. These sugars are the key ingredients in the formation of biofuels. C. lucknowense is a fungus, capable of producing cellulases, hemicellulase and other such enzymes. The research group at Dyadic was keen on using at least one of the two new cellobiohydrolases in conjunction with a beta-glucosidase and an endoglucanase. As enzymes are key catalytic accelerators of ethanol generation, finding enzyme rich biological sources aids up process development.

 

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Advancements in Microbial Catalysis on Cellulosic Feedstock for Ethanol Production

May 23rd, 2011

Microbes play the fundamental role in the conversion of sugars to ethanol. Different species of bacteria and yeasts have been characterized with potential to catalytically transform the sugars to alcohol but suffer from limitations such as yield, sensitivity to alcohol, kinetics of substrate utilization, spectrum of substrates, antibiotic tolerance etc and hence demanding for microbe strain improvement as a routine and integrated part of ethanol production.

Startup Qteros, formerly known as SunEthanol holds the key to finally make cellulosic ethanol cost-effective. It’s a bacterium called the Q microbe or Clostridium phytofermentans. These slender bacteria can dissolve cellulose into sugars and convert the sugar into ethanol, all in one step. When the microbes find themselves in high concentrations of cellulose, they consume voraciously and leave only ethanol behind. A scientist whose lab discovered the bacterium theorizes that it outcompetes other species by being able to utilize a wide variety of plant components very quickly. Qteros expects to simplify the two steps into one and dramatically reduce the cost of making cellulosic ethanol using its bacteria, which naturally consumes cellulose and produce ethanol as metabolic end product. Microbial metabolic engineering is an emerging field in life sciences whose principle is to identify and regulate energy driven life processes at the cellular level by tools of genetics and biochemistry for the optimization of production of valuable products.

 

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Cost Effective Technology for Alcohol Production

May 23rd, 2011

Globe is now under a tremendous pressure for energy and people currently are exploiting fossilized fuels as their prime source of energy. However it has resulted in some serious consequences including global warming and lack of sustainability which makes human intellectuals to scan for bio based renewable materials as alternative sources for energy production. They are of different categories and ethanol based biofuels is one of the most promising classes because of its feasibility for commercial scale production. The technology has been facing constant problems and sometimes treated inferior to earth fuels on grounds of cost. It prompts research and commercial units to conduct rational scientific research in cutting down the costs.

 

Coskata Inc., a leading developer of biology-based technology for the production of biofuels, launched and unveiled its proprietary process. The process can produce ethanol almost anywhere in the world, using a wide range of feedstock, for less than US $1.00 per gallon, according to the company. This technology makes the widespread use and availability of ethanol much more achievable.  Using patented microorganisms and transformative bioreactor designs, Coskata ethanol is produced via a unique three-step conversion process that turns virtually any carbon-based feedstock, including biomass, municipal solid waste, bagasse and other agricultural waste into ethanol  carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 84% compared to

conventional gasoline. Technologies such as this developed with broad dimension are most sought to promote biofuels.

 

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New Pretreatment Research Methods in the Synthesis of Ethanol

May 23rd, 2011

Pretreatment of cellulosic biomass is one of the most processes in the generation of ethanol. It is routinely performed with acid or enzyme treatments for the transformation of cellulosic polymers into soluble sugars which will be catalytically subjected to generate alcohol under anaerobic conditions. Scientists are in an active research throughout the world to hasten the pretreatment process for timely product recovery which has resulted in new protocols in alcohol production technology. Some of the recently developed technologies include

An extrusion process melded with alkaline peroxide chemical pretreatments allows the lignin and hemicellulose in biomass to be solublized, and the cellulose component to be made available for enzymatic breakdown. This process is called the Xylan Delignification Process (XDP). It was found that the XDP process allowed quick (6 hour) and reasonably complete (85–88%) hydrolysis of the cellulose fraction of cornstalks, but was less effective in allowing utilization of the switch grass and The BALI pretreatment process, developed by Borregaard enables production of valuable products out of all three main lignocellulosic components – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. It facilitates low cost hydrolysis of cellulose by lowering the energy consumption and recirculation of enzymes. With platforms from classical methods theses new modifications tend to make the process convenient for economically wise production of alcohol.

 

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Economic Resource Partitioning in Production of Ethanol

May 21st, 2011

Ethanol production is tightly coupled to a multi step process where cost analysis is of utmost significance in the successful commercialization and a relatively stable price fixation for the final product besides technical optimization. Economics is to be worked out on a step wise manner to estimate the magnitude of expenses that each unit operation is incurring and its impact on the whole process. It generates a clarified view for the entrepreneur to make a good prediction on the allocation of currency in a timely way for an optimal turn over in the end. Experts have calculated the cost factor for the entire process and have identified that biomass feedstocks takes the maximum investment which comes to 33% while the storage of feedstocks accounts for a lowest expenditure. Pretreatment of biomass takes up siginificant expense by one fifth of the total while enzymes and costs for the fermentation are almost consuming equal investments but found to be only one tenth of the whole investment. Other acessory processes are also investment driven.

Cost estimates are providing us a valuable picture on the feasibility of the process for any scale of operation and also it enables us to devise our own protocol for the ethanol production at minimal costs for a profitful run of the business.

 

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Hurdles in Feedstock Transport for Ethanol Synthesis

May 21st, 2011

Cellulosic biomass is a complex bulky organic material which seems to be highly randomized in its distribution. So applying them as a feedstock essentially requires collection and transportation of preprocessed materials to the site of production. It may sound quite simplified but is facing a multitude of barriers for the successful alcohol generation. They include raw materials to be inspected for biochemical composition, microbial contamination , storage conditions, post harvest processing method, bulk density of the material, time and nature of packing, method of preprocessing as grinding and densification, mass of substance suitable for transportation, nature of handling of biomass and time period of transport etc to the production site.

Entrepreneurs initiating the ventures in ethanol production from cellulosic biomass must have a proper follow up with feedstock suppliers and carefully monitoring on availability of biomass and their types for an uninterrupted production of ethanol in long term perspective. It is advisable to have deep spectrum of supply under conditions of emergency and if possible a storage godown or generation of biomass from their farm lands would tremendously improve the possibilities of success and profits in their business. Policy makers also should analyze the issue systematically to solve the problems of raw material demand and price fluctuations.

 

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