Cellulosic Ethanol Enzymes in 4 Years?

China
“China is yet again different. The Chinese government has a huge sense of urgency in order to try to reduce its energy dependence and at the same time be in a position to supply energy to a growing affluent population. They have recently stopped all projects that use food crops as China is already food deficient. All ethanol projects planned at the moment involve either cellulosic technology (mainly corn stover, wheat straw and wood) or non-food crops (which includes sweet sorghum, cassava and sweet potato). The Chinese are trying to make biofuels happen on a big scale, involving the largest oil, and technology companies as well as grain giants” Novozymes has established an important partnership with COFCO in China and is working diligently with our partner on a pilot plant with an aim to convert corn stover.

Brazil
“Brazil represents an interesting opportunity. First, Brazil is planting lower cost sugarcane every year, so the incentive to go to other types of feedstock seems very limited and the cost to produce ethanol from sugar can is unmatched. However, they have developed an important domestic market and can work with a captive stream present at the ethanol plants which is already collected and sometimes even grossly pre-treated: sugar cane bagasse. Using bagasse has great potential because one of the major cost components, transportation to the plant, is eliminated. Additionally, the legislation in Brazil is changing and sugar cane fields will not be pre-burnt as much as they are now and therefore have to be mechanically harvested creating an additional volume of biomass, essentially in the leaves. The latter will cause an increase in the availability of bagasse in the next few years.” Through a partnership with CTC (Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira), Novozymes expects to develop technologies that will cost efficiently convert bagasse into ethanol.

Time table: the introduction of cellulosic ethanol and beyond
With strong support in the United States and China, extensive academic research in Europe and great potential in Brazil, how far away are we from a winning technology? “I don’t think there will be a clear winner in cellulosic technology in four years time. However, I do think that, within this time line, several plants will produce ethanol from ligno-cellulosic feedstock, from agricultural residues, wood residues and probably a few from industrial waste. They will produce this on an industrial basis which translates into,25 to 50 million gallons per year plants. But each of these companies will have different technologies combined in their process. They will have different pre-treatment methods, different enzymes blends, different fermentation technologies and also different organisms. All these companies will have proprietary processes or would have acquired pieces of the process through licensing, and, step by step, the less efficient processes will be filtered out.
Novozymes has put in place an unprecedented R&D effort with more than 100 people developing enzymes and acquiring a better understanding of associated processes which heavily impact the hydrolysis step. Thanks to this commitment, Novozymes expects to be in a position to offer enzymes than can help to make cellulosic ethanol economically viable within 4 years from now.