Cellulosic Biomass to Ethanol – Iogen Technology

This post explains the technology employed by Iogen, the world leader in Cellulose Ethanol. I have highlighted the technology employed by this sustainability minded company and the technology they have employed to commercialize cellulosic ethanol.

Generally, the conversion of cellulosic ethanol involves three steps. The technology employed by Iogen has been explained briefly in the preceding paragraphs.

Activation step
Biological conversion
Product recovery

The first step involves converting the raw cellulosic biomass into reactive intermediates. This is either by pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, acid hydrolysis or gasification. Studies reveal that pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis serves to be the cheapest method in the activation step.

Companies like Iogen, who are world leaders in cellulose ethanol, have developed an efficient pretreatment method such as steam explosion. This method increases the surface area and the accessibility of the plant fibre to enzymes. This modified steam explosion process has not only improved the ethanol yields over the years but also has increased the pretreatment efficiency as well as reduces the overall cost.

Iogen produces some highly potent and efficient cellulose enzyme systems by themselves and those are tailored to the specific feedstock. This is followed by fermentation. Iogen has also developed reactor systems which have proved to fabricate high productivity and high conversion of cellulose into glucose. They have been able to do through a multi-stage hydrolysis process.

Again, I would like to highlight the fact that companies such as Iogen uses advanced microorganisms and fermentation systems which convert both C6 and C5 sugars to ethanol. This results in what is called “beer”. Further distillation is required to produce cellulose ethanol to be used as a fuel.

The last step involved is the process integration wherein energy efficient heat integration,
water recycling, and co-product production are performed to make the overall process economical as well as efficient.

For those of the scientific bent - Full article