Fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass for fuel-grade ethanol production

PureVision Technology, Inc. (PureVision) of Fort Lupton, Colorado is developing a process for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fuel-grade ethanol and specialty chemicals in order to enhance national energy security, rural economies, and environmental quality. Lignocellulosic-containing plants are those types of biomass that include wood, agricultural residues, and paper wastes. Lignocellulose is composed of the biopolymers cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose, a polymer of glucose, is the component in lignocellulose that has potential for the production of fuel-grade ethanol by direct fermentation of the glucose. However, enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose and raw cellulose into glucose is hindered by the presence of lignin. The cellulase enzyme, which hydrolyzes cellulose to glucose, becomes irreversibly bound to lignin. This requires using the enzyme in reagent quantities rather than in catalytic concentration. The extensive use of this enzyme is expensive and adversely affects the economics of ethanol production. PureVision has approached this problem by developing a biomass fractionator to pretreat the lignocellulose to yield a highly pure cellulose fraction. The biomass fractionator is based on sequentially treating the biomass with hot water, hot alkaline solutions, and polishing the cellulose fraction with a wet alkaline oxidation step. In September 2001 PureVision and Western Research Institute (WRI) initiated a jointly sponsored research project with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to evaluate their pretreatment technology, develop an understanding of the chemistry, and provide the data required to design and fabricate a one- to two-ton/day pilot-scale unit. The efforts during the first year of this program completed the design, fabrication, and shakedown of a bench-scale reactor system and evaluated the fractionation of corn stover. The results from the evaluation of corn stover have shown that water hydrolysis prior to alkaline hydrolysis may be beneficial in removing hemicellulose and lignin from the feedstock. In addition, alkaline hydrolysis has been shown to remove a significant portion of the hemicellulose and lignin. The resulting cellulose can be exposed to a finishing step with wet alkaline oxidation to remove the remaining lignin. The final product is a highly pure cellulose fraction containing less than 1\% of the native lignin with an overall yield in excess of 85\% of the native cellulose. This report