Novel DDR Processing of Corn Stover Achieves High Monomeric Sugar Concentrations from Enzymatic Hydrolysis (230 g/L) and High Ethanol Concentration (10% v/v) During Fermentation

Conference · Fri Apr 03 04:00:00 EDT 2015

OSTI ID:1304568

Chen, Xiaowen; Jennings, Ed; Shekiro, Joe; Kuhn, Erik M.; O'Brien, Marykate; Wang, Wei; Schell, Daniel J.; Himmel, Mike; Elander, Richard T.; Tucker, Melvin P.

Distilling and purifying ethanol, butanol, and other products from second and later generation lignocellulosic biorefineries adds significant capital and operating cost for biofuels production. The energy costs associated with distillation affects plant gate and life cycle analysis costs. Lower titers in fermentation due to lower sugar concentrations from pretreatment increase both energy and production costs. In addition, higher titers decrease the volumes required for enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation vessels. Therefore, increasing biofuels titers has been a research focus in renewable biofuels production for several decades. In this work, we achieved over 200 g/L of monomeric sugars after high solids enzymatic hydrolysis using the novel deacetylation and disc refining (DDR) process on corn stover. The high sugar concentrations and low chemical inhibitor concentrations from the DDR process allowed ethanol titers as high as 82 g/L in 22 hours, which translates into approximately 10 vol% ethanol. To our knowledge, this is the first time that 10 vol% ethanol in fermentation derived from corn stover without any sugar concentration or purification steps has been reported. Techno-economic analysis shows the higher titer ethanol achieved from the DDR process could significantly reduce the minimum ethanol selling price from cellulosic biomass.

• Research Organization: NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States))
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Bioenergy Technologies Office (EE-3B)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1304568
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5100-63129
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

09 BIOMASS FUELS
DDR
corn stover
disc refining
ethanol
novel deacetylation