A Biorefinery Process Suitable for Non-Wood Fibers, 2007 Engineering, Pulping & Environmental Conference

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The large-scale production of fuel ethanol from lignocellulosic materials is now a major commercial objective worldwide. Agricultural residues and deliberately grown annual crops are receiving the most attention as feedstocks mostly because of their widespread availability and relative ease of processing when compared to wood. Non-wood fibers are generally easier to process partly because of their more open structure, whereas wood, with its dense and compact cellular morphology, requires significant pretreatment. Because of these and other factors, many developing biorefinery technologies are designed to preferentially utilize non-wood fibers. Lignol Innovations Ltd. has developed a modified organosolv biorefinery process that includes enzymatic saccharification and fermentation of cellulose and other polysaccharides. This biorefinery technology produces not only fuel ethanol but also other valuable industrial chemical co-products from non-wood fibers and other types of woody biomass. With the higher revenues generated from these co-products this technology can be economically-attractive even when built at a significantly smaller scale than is required by many other developing biorefinery processes. This is advantageous for non-wood fiber feedstocks, such as agricultural residues, since it reduces the cost of feedstock storage and transportation to the biorefinery.