Advanced biofuels – bioethanol and biodiesel from lignocellulosic substrates

  • Heike Kahr (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentationOral presentation

Description

The economic production of biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass requires quantitative fermentation of the cellulose as well as hemicellulose. The bioethanol production process consists of milling, a pretreatment step using steam explosion, increase of biomass concentration, enzymatic hydrolysis, recirculation of the hydrolyzed sugar solution to increase the sugar concentration, fermentation with yeast and downstream processing. Only GMO yeast can ferment both sugars – glucose and xylose, but these yeast strains are not very stabile during the industrial process and the use of these yeast strains enhances the strict security requirements and therefore the cost of the plant. Alternatively xylose can be use as substrate for feeding another microorganism. The removal of C5 sugars derived from hemicellulose after the steam explosion step will be investigated. These sugars will be feed to oleaginous yeasts to produce appropriate fatty acid biodiesel while the C6 sugar from cellulose will be used for the production of bioethanol. The oleaginous yeasts will be screened and adapted to the inhibitors formed during the pretreatment and hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrate. The improved bioethanol process and the coupling to the biodiesel production through oleaginous yeast enable the commercialization of bioethanol and biodiesel production from lignocellulosic substrates.
Period23 May 2012
Event titleEnergy and Materials Research Conference - EMR2012
Event typeConference
LocationTorremolinos, SpainShow on map