New Simple Biomass Process Yield Fermentable Sugars for Bioethanol

Research efforts on the production of biofuels through the use of inedible plant materials such as corn stover, switchgrass and wood chips across the United States have been a response to a federal mandate that biofuels and ethanol would not be derived from food sources. However, the plant's cellulose's energy-rich sugars are inaccessible for processing by biofuel converting enzymes.

Ron Aines, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of biochemistry and chemistry, and his graduate student Joe Binder recently published in the March 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a new approach that can convert three quarters of the inaccessible sugar in the raw cotton stover. The technique involves the use of an ionic liquid and dilute acid, both of which can slip past layers of plant lignin to dissolve the long chains of sugars in biomass and break them up into simple sugars glucose and xylose. With other procedures including the addition of water during the process, an overall yield of 75 percent sugar was obtained. Using this cost-effective and efficient method, the researchers were able to convert half of the sugars available in plant biomass into liquid fuel.

For details, see the story at  http://www.news.wisc.edu/17780