Study Shows Potential of Bamboo Ethanol

Researchers at Imperial College London have demonstrated that ethanol production from bamboo in China is both technically and economically feasible, as well as cost-competitive with petrol fuel.

Bamboo, just like other grasses used for biofuel production, has complex polymeric composition that hampers enzymatic breakdown and release of sugars that can be fermented into ethanol. Pretreatments are used to enhance the release of these usable sugars for ethanol production. In their study, the Imperial College London team performed liquid hot water (LHW) pretreatment at temperatures of 170 to 190 degrees Celsius for 10 to 30 minutes, followed by enzymatic breakdown of complex sugars with a commercial enzyme cocktail at various loadings. The data were then fed into a techno-economic model to determine the production cost of bioethanol.

The economic analysis showed that the lowest enzyme loading had the most commercially viable scenario, primarily due to the significant contribution of enzyme to cost, which at higher loadings was not defrayed adequately by an increase in the amount of sugar released. The analysis demonstrated that bamboo ethanol would be competitive with gasoline at the pump in scenarios with enzyme loadings of 60 FPU/g glucan and lower. However, in a prospective scenario with reduced government support (tax break or subsidy), this enzyme loading threshold would be reduced to 30 FPU/g glucan.