Cellulosic Ethanol Basics Guide.


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Cellulosic Ethanol Basics

Cellulosic ethanol is a type of biofuel produced from lignocellulose, which is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. This structural material makes up the bulk of any plant material, and is therefore present in vast quantities. This makes it very attractive as the feedstock source for generating ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is also called lignocellulosic ethanol or ceetoh.

Advantages of Cellulosic Ethanol

There are many advantages to cellulosic ethanol which may make it the primary means by which ethanol is manufactured in the future.

  • It can be produced from almost any plant waste.
  • It can be made using parts of the plant that do not impact the food supply.
  • The net energy produced using cellulosic ethanol is significantly greater than for the current leading ethanol production processes - using sugarcane and corn.
  • Some studies show that cellulosic ethanol could reduce GHG emissions by 90% over petroleum gasoline and provide more yield per hectare than corn.

Production

There are two main ways to produce cellulosic ethanol.

  • The Cellulolysis processes is a biological process which consist of hydrolysis of pretreated lignocellulosic materials followed by fermentation and distillation.
  • Gasification that transforms the lignocellulosic raw material into gaseous carbon monoxide and hydrogen. These gases can be converted to ethanol by fermentation or chemical catalysis.

Cellulolysis

The stages in producing ethanol using this biological approach are:

  1. A "pretreatment" phase, to make the lignocellulosic material such as wood or straw amenable to hydrolysis,
  2. Cellulose hydrolysis (cellulolysis), to break down the molecules into sugars;
  3. Separation of the sugar solution from the residual materials, notably lignin;
  4. Microbial fermentation of the sugar solution;
  5. Distillation to produce 99.5% pure alcohol.

References:

Carson I and Vaitheeswaran VV (2007). Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future. Twelve. 336 pages.

Paul B (2007). Future Energy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 226 pages.

Pernick R and Wilder C (2007). clean tech revolution. Collins. 308 pages.

Wikipedia Cellulosic ethanol.