Partnership Commercializes Biomass to Ethanol Production
Ethanol is a cleaner-burning, renewable fuel that can be
produced from a number of domestic feedstocks, mostly crops such as corn and
grains. Spurred by federal (and state) incentives, ethanol is already blended at
ten percent concentrations into much of the gasoline Americans buy at the pump,
helping to cut down on polluting emissions and making an immediate reduction in
foreign oil imports. However, cost is one impediment to more widespread use of
the fuel, both as an additive and in higher 85 percent concentrations.
A
private/public-sector partnership led by Amoco Corporation and the Department of
Energy's Office of Transportation and Technologies recently demonstrated a new
process for producing ethanol from cellulosic materials, opening up a new world
of higher yields from traditional feedstock possibilities, as well as allowing
higher yields from traditional feedstocks by converting the fibrous parts of the
plant. SWAN Biomass, an Amoco/Stonen & Webster partnership, is planning to
commercialize the process, making this new science available to ethanol
producers nationwide.
In 1991, Amoco officially began coordinating its
research and development with the Office of Transportation Technologies at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory through the formation of a Cooperative
Research and Development Agreement. These agreements have newly developed,
streamlined format that allows the private and public sectors to work together
more efficiently. The Laboratory was developing a process called simultaneous
saccharification/fermentation, which combines two main conversion steps into
one, decreasing production time and increasing yields. This process became the
platform on which the team optimized its ongoing ethanol process development
efforts.
By the next year, the Office of Transportation Technologies and
Amoco began jointly funding genetic engineering and process research and
development program at Purdue University. That work produced a
genetically-engineered yeast robust enough to meet large-scale industrial
ethanol production requirements.
As part of the cooperative agreement,
both partners invested in research associated with a Process Development Unit
built at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This production scale
facility is flexible and highly instrumented, allowing new biomass-to-ethanol
technologies to be evaluated beyond laboratory scale. The partners made
extensive use of the new facility to refine and scale up the technology,
demonstrating the commercial-scale effectiveness of their proprietary enzymes
and yeasts, as well as individual process breakthroughs such as an aggressive
pretreatment that activates tough lignocellulosic polymers. These and other
efficiencies will help ethanol producers manufacture ethanol in the 60-80 cents
per gallon range.
In early 1996, the process development unit completed
two successful full-scale,six week runs to prove the efficacy of the new
cellulosic biomass-to-ethanol process, using corn fiber as a feedstock. With
this milestone, the cooperative agreement will accelerate into the final
demonstration phase.
Increasing ethanol use from its current levels of
about 1.5 billion gallons to 20 billion gallons, possible through application of
this new technology, could provide a substantial reduction in American reliance
on foreign oil. It also would serve to remove millions of tons of carbon
monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions from the air, as well as to create tens of
thousands of new jobs in diverse sectors including agribusiness, engineering,
fuels production, ethanol plant production and more.
For further
information, contact the U.S. Department of Energy, OTT,
202/586-8014.
Reproduced in part, with permission from the Office of
Transportation Technologies.
| This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under agreement No. 43-3AES-5-80074. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. |
