Evaluation of Technologies for the Pre-Treatment and Enzymatic Breakdown of Lignocellulosic Feedstocks for the Manufacture of 2,5 Furandicarboxylic Acid
The overall goal of this Small Business Innovation Research program is to demonstrate novel technology to extract target compounds from lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) for value-added chemicals production. A pre-treatment step, effectively separating the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin fractions, followed by enzymatic hydrolysis will target specific 5-carbon pentosan molecules (xylan/xylose) for further processing. The cellulose and lignin components can be returned to an existing cellulose processing plant/bio-refinery or utilized as a source of waste heat. The xylan components will be converted to furfural and subsequently to 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) at high selectivity. Forestry and agri-residues are prime candidates for xylan recovery and red oak, sweetgum, and corn stover were selected for study in this program. Available xylan content was assessed and ranged from 19-20wt% in the dried lignocellulose biomass. Hydrothermal and dilute acid pretreatments were conducted, achieving upwards of 85-90% recovery of available xylose. Depending on the pretreatment method, xylo-oligomer or monomer form were characterized for impacts ultimately on furfural selectivity. Combined severity factor was utilized to characterize the multi-variable optimization identifying a range of conditions yielding maximum xylose recovery. Furthermore, less severe pretreatment conditions resulted in upwards of 20-50% of available xylose retained in the pretreated residual biomass, with less toxic wastes generated. Enzymatic deconstruction of this pretreated substrate was demonstrated with 50-100% recovery of available xylose and in some cocktail combinations, additionally upwards of 90% glucose recovery. Integrated catalytic and reactive distillation (iCARD) was conducted on purified xylose as well as various pretreated hydrolysates with varying degrees of xylo-oligomer and monomer form xylose available in the feedstocks. Conditions achieved highly selective production of furfural from both feedstock forms confirming the robustness of the approach for varying pretreatment methodologies. A techno-economic analysis was completed with fixed capital investment associated with a 60M lb/yr FDCA plant of $40M would enable pretreatment-through-FDCA production. Revenues of $51M per annum and cost-of-goods-sold of $19.9M yield a $31M gross margin or 61% of sales. The project generates a payout in 1.3 years and a ROIC of 75% making this project a compelling investment opportunity and worthy of further development under a Phase II program.
- Research Organization:
- KSE, Inc.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0022367
- OSTI ID:
- 1894859
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE_KSE-22367
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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