Ethanol Innovation Turns Wood Into Sugar at Room Temperature
In what could be a major breakthrough for second generation ethanol production, German researchers have developed a new method that easily converts raw wood into sugar using a liquid ionic salt bath at room temperature followed by reaction with a solid acid resin.
The process works by chopping the complex raw wood molecules into smaller and simpler bits — the end product being single sugar molecules. The method can also be used on other second generation ethanol feedstocks such as grass straw. Once you’ve made the sugar, the rest of the process of making ethanol is as simple as making beer — literally.
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The current conventional method of making second generation cellulosic ethanol — or, “celluline,” as I like to call it — is actually very energy intensive and uses harsh chemicals to digest the woody materials in very strong acids and/or at extremely high temperature.
This new method, developed by the research group of professor Ferdi Schüth at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, foregoes those energy intensive methods and works at room temperature.
Right now, the major stumbling block for the new method is that the materials used to make the salt bath are expensive. But, as with everything, I imagine that when used at a commercial scale those costs would fall dramatically.
A while back, fellow gas 2.0 writer Alex Felsinger, wrote a post about a new new energy-efficient process that turns sugar directly into gasoline. Seems to me that if we were to marry these two processes, we might actually have the holy grail of our future biofuel transportation needs. Are those two groups talking?
So, put the fight about corn ethanol, energy efficiency, energy independence and food supply aside for a moment and take a long view of the future of biofuels. I really don’t mean that facetiously, it’s just that I believe we so often get caught up in the issues surrounding corn ethanol and making fuel from food crops that we tend to write off biofuels as a flop.
In reality, corn ethanol is a stop gap to help us develop an infrastructure for the second generation of non-food biofuels like cellulosic ethanol. I just hope that these seemingly disjointed groups of researchers start talking to one another and combining these constant breakthroughs into a coherent and commercializable product so that we can move on with our energy future.
Image Credit: superiphi’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons License
Source: Renewable Energy World (via Biofuels Digest)
“Once you’ve made the sugar, the rest of the process of making ethanol is as simple as making beer — literally.”
Try putting beer in an ethanol-burning engine and tell me how that goes. It has to be distilled first, which is decidedly more complex than making beer.
Brian,
My man. I understand the desire to nitpick (I fall for that myself sometimes) but I believe you’re missing the point of my point. On a relative scale of “things that are difficult to accomplish during the production of cellulosic ethanol” the “fermentation/distillation of sugar” part is at the bottom that list — considering the basics of these techniques have been known for centuries.
As a fervent homebrewer, I do understand your point, but think that if that’s what you picked up on from my article you may have missed how big this development truly could be.
No, no… I get the main point. (And hey, nice to interact with a fellow homebrewer.)
Getting good sugar conversion from the feedstock (especially from cellulose) is the trickier and least efficient part of the process now. This news is certainly good news, and a step toward lowering the overall costs. Being from Maine, a place with plenty of wood product waste, this could be big for us down the road.
It’s certainly a better long-term objective than corn ethanol, and I hope your bit about the “holy grail” comes to fruition one day.
As long as it is Cellulosic you guys have my vote all the way.
Great Post!
Great development. But I would rather have efforts put towards non CO2 emitting holy grails.
Anon, trees eat CO2 out of the air and release O2, then the wood is converted into ethanol which releases CO2 and eats O2. It’s a cycle - no net CO2 is “emitted.”
Bah. If this has any promise of actually working economically, the envirocult will turn against it, just as they have against wind power. After all, they have already crippled the logging industry in many places, and that’s *before* this potential added demand for cellulosic biomass even exists.
Instead of competing with food uses, this will boost demand for lumber and its byproducts, putting it in the sights of the “old-growth” lovers.
And lastly, even if they can find enough non-lumber cellulose sources, the previous commenter is already signalling the plan of attack to be used in that case: this isn’t a “non-CO2″ pathway.
It doesn’t matter that this pathway involves CO2 taken out of the atmosphere by the growing woody plants first; the envirocult isn’t about “nature” so much as they are against human activity.
Their actions make a lot more sense when seen in that light.
Sugar, alchol and yeast; if I understand correctly these are basic requirements for ethanol. MIT developed a powerful yeast product(?) that increases th ealchol content to 20% vice the natural level of 10%. This 10% stoping point is a fact of nature. yeast turns sugar into alchol then distroyes itself when the content reaches 10%. This is why ethanol is so very inefficient. The MIT discovery doubles the power of ethanol.
The question is is this energy enhancer being used and does it do the job with this new process?
But what about spotted owls?
I wonder how esoteric the chemical reactions are - is this something that will only be done at an industrial level, or might we woodworkers get to convert the sawdust under our tablesaws and lathes into fuel in our garage, like the biodiesel / fryolater-scavengers do?