Taking a Step Towards Sustainability with 3rd Generation Biorefining

Related Vendors

EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft mbH

Pörner Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH

TRM Filter d.o.o.

Chempolis Biorefining Park

Second vs Third Generation Biorefineries

In general, cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin are the main components of all cellulosic biomasses. The 2G biorefining technologies typically aim at converting both cellulose and hemicelluloses into cellulosic ethanol while the remaining biomass fractions are utilized for lower value-added products. Principally, the bulk of lignin-rich slurry containing significant amount of water is intended for production of energy.

So far, high enzyme costs and complicated fermentation have stressed the profitability of these technologies in which both cellulose and hemicelluloses are simultaneously enzymatically hydrolyzed and further fermented in the presence of lignin.

Reducing the Enzyme Costs

However, the enzyme costs can be significantly reduced when biomass fractionation is carried out selectively and one gets to feed a pure cellulose fiber into enzymatic hydrolysis. Further benefits are gained when the resulting pure glucose can be conventionally fermented to ethanol. When compared to 2G biorefining technologies, the main advantage of the 3G technology is exactly the selective fractionation of cellulosic biomass and the possibility to produce pure cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin fractions.

The fractionation enables co-production of multiple value-added products without generation of waste, reduced operating costs (especially enzyme cost) and clearly higher revenues, as well as full recovery of chemicals and water. Moreover, high pressures and temperatures characteristic for 2G technologies are not needed due to the innovative and fully recyclable biosolvent.

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