Cellulosic Ethanol Enzymes in 4 Years?

AMSTERDAM – The price of light sweet crude has broken through $85 per barrel, Goldman Sachs predicts price spikes above $90 and Lehman Brothers even mentions the probability of three-figure territory before the end of 2007. When looking at increasing demand figures from developing economies such as China and slow discovery rates of new oil reserves, few would predict oil prices going below $70 or even $80 per barrel in the next few years. Although climate change is an important point on the political agenda, recent price rallies in fossil energy sources and agricultural commodities seem to have created a real sense of urgency among policy makers to develop cellulosic ethanol technology. Investments and subsidies are numerous, notably in the United States and Asia, and at the centre of all this is Novozymes; global market leader in the production of industrial enzymes, the key to make cellulosic ethanol economically viable.

Novozymes has a market share of over 50% in the market for enzymes that are used in ethanol production. Novozymes has been responsible for great advances in the cost competitiveness of cellulosic ethanol between 2000 and 2004, when their work was financed by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). Ethanol Statistics sat down with Emmanuel Petiot, Global Business Development Manager at Novozymes, to discuss the challenges that lay ahead in the next few years and the process that will unfold after the technological breakthrough. According to him, a lot of work needs to be done, “but we are not far away from a competitive solution that is able to produce ethanol from cellulosic materials such as corn stover and other agricultural residues.”

The main challenges for cellulosic ethanol
When discussing the commercial feasibility of cellulosic ethanol, the lack of efficient and cost competitive enzymes seems to always dominate the list of pros and cons. However, “enzymes are no longer the show stopper to the commercial viability of the industry.” Mr. Petiot says. “Between 2000 and 2004 we have reduced the cost of enzymes in lab scale by 30 fold, including a 6 fold reduction directly derived from the specific activity of our enzymes. What we need now are two types of research that will lower the cost of production from pre-treatment to fermentation. We need a combination of fundamental research combined with application driven work, because the most important thing to understand at this point is that significant improvements can no longer be realised in isolation. You cannot develop enzymes and sell them in the market two years from now and hope it will click. It’s not a standard enzymes application. Instead, you need to involve other parties and fields of expertise early in the process. All the steps, pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation need to interact early on. You need to understand that if you choose a cheap method for pre-treatment, your capital costs will be low, but at the same time, it is very likely that you will not properly open up the fibres for hydrolysis and basically lose sugar potential within the first step. After the pre-treatment, you need an enzyme that can do the work, in a more cost-efficient manner than today. New proteins with enhanced catalytic activity targeting biomass and hydrolyzing it in an efficient manner. The second thing is to find a micro organism that can convert C5 sugars. A lot of research has been done in the past few years and today you can probably find quite a few micro organisms that can potentially do the job, but none of them has done so on a commercially scaled basis. Building pilot and demonstration plants to test and improve the entire system, is probably the most important step we need to take in the industry today.”