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Extreme Environment Biology Research May Help Solve Lignocellulosic Ethanol Puzzle
By Mr Ethanol | June 13, 2007
Science Daily:
Buried beneath a sulfurous cauldron in European seas lies a class of microorganisms known as “extremophiles,” so named because of the extreme environmental conditions in which they live and thrive. Almost as radical, perhaps, is the idea that these organisms and their associated enzymes could somehow unlock the key to a new transportation economy based on a renewable biofuel, lignocellulosic ethanol.
That’s the concept behind an internally funded research program at Sandia National Laboratories, now in its second year. As researchers search for ways to process cellulosic biomass cheaply and efficiently for the production of lignocellulosic ethanol, the Sandia project aims to successfully demonstrate various computational tools and enzyme engineering methods that will make extreme enzymes relevant to the technical debate. Processing of biomass key to ethanol production Blake Simmons, a chemical engineer and project lead at Sandia’s Livermore, Calif., site, says that the primary hurdle preventing lignocellulosic ethanol from becoming a viable transportation fuel is not the availability of lignocellulosic biomass, but rather its efficient and cost-effective processing.
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.
“Production is not a concern. More than a billion tons of biomass is estimated to be created each year in the timber and agricultural industries, as well as a variety of grasses and potential energy crops,” says Simmons. “Unfortunately, you can’t just take a tree trunk, stick it into an enzymatic reactor, and ferment the sugar produced into ethanol with any kind of efficiency. The process of turning certain lignocellulosic materials into ethanol is very difficult and costly.”
That process, says Simmons, typically involves several pretreatment steps that break up lignocellulosic material into easily converted polymers.
Continuing with the tree trunk analogy, Simmons says the laborious process typically begins by chopping the biomass to reduce its size and then delivering it into a dilute acid pretreatment reactor. The reactor then would break down the biomass into cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. The hemicellulose and cellulose polymers released from the biomass must go through additional processing and acid neutralization before the final product is recovered and placed back into an enzymatic reactor to deconstruct the polymers into fermentable sugars. Not exactly swift and efficient, says Simmons, and very costly.
Utilizing nature’s own extreme enzymes… read on.
Topics: Energy, Ethanol, News, Positives, Research, Science |
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