ExxonMobil and Porsche expand motorsports technology partnership into Formula E; lubricants and fluids
Hyosung investing $840M in carbon fiber business

Clariant concludes testing of conversion of miscanthus biomass into lignocellulosic sugars and ethanol

Clariant has conducted tests on approximately 30 tons of miscanthus provided by INA, Croatia’s leading oil and gas company. The miscanthus biomass was harvested and baled at the INA demonstration site in Croatia in February this year and shipped for processing to Clariant’s pre-commercial sunliquid plant in Straubing, Germany for conversion into lignocellulosic sugars and ethanol.

Clariant Image Pre-commercial plant Straubing 20190902

INA is a consortium member of the publicly funded project “GRowing Advanced industrial Crops on marginal lands for biorEfineries” (GRACE). The GRACE project has received funding from the “Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking” (BBI JU) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The consortium consists of 22 partners from universities, the agricultural sector and the industry.

The aims and objectives of the project are to optimize various miscanthus value chains, to produce sustainable products with a strong market potential and to develop miscanthus as a sustainable feedstock resource for cultivation on marginal, contaminated and abandoned land.

Against this background, Clariant was asked by the GRACE consortium to run tests of miscanthus as a feedstock for the production of lignocellulosic sugars and ethanol.

Final results show that Clariant’s sunliquid technology can successfully convert miscanthus biomass into lignocellulosic sugars and ethanol, confirming the benefits of the sugar process platform.

With the flexible sunliquid process design, lignocellulosic sugars can be generated as an intermediate product that have the potential to serve as a building block for future production of bio-based chemicals. Making further use of Clariant’s proprietary enzyme platform for feedstock specific enzymes can finally open up the full potential of this promising energy crop.

This demonstrates that miscanthus, also known as elephant grass or China reed, proves itself as an interesting feedstock option for the production of lignocellulosic sugars and ethanol. Once cultivated in marginal lands, the plant grows rapidly over 15-20 years as a permanent crop, has a low mineral content and offers a high yield per hectare. Pesticides and fertilizers are not required on a yearly basis, which further adds to miscanthus’ ecological benefits.

Over the past seven years Clariant’s pre-commercial plant has also demonstrated cellulosic ethanol production on agricultural residues such as corn stover, sugarcane bagasse and straw as well as wheat, barley and rice straw.

In the fall of last year, Clariant broke ground on its greenfield first-of-its-kind full-scale commercial cellulosic ethanol plant in Podari, the southwestern region of Romania. The new plant, with an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons, will be a flagship site, confirming competitiveness and sustainability of the sunliquid technology at commercial scale thus supporting Clariant’s sunliquid licensing business strategy.

Comments

Nirmalkumar

good beginning
cellulose ethanol is very promising technology but till date no large scale plant has come up.
Farmers can benifit and millions of jobs can be created in countryside once technology succeeds.

SJC

Gasify what remains to make synthetic gasoline.

Lad

Hydrocarbon fuel from any source is still hydrocarbon and still polluting when burned in air. The idea of clean energy means sans hydrocarbons.

mahonj

You'll be using HCs for a while in aviation, and probably long range trucking.
And probably shipping (which definitely needs to be cleaned up with lower sulphur fuel at least).

SJC

Anyone can say what they think should happen, it is more about what is likely to happen. Go with that to achieve objectives, then you won't be so disappointed.

Engineer-Poet

Miscanthus is both a replacement for, not a byproduct of, food production AND a non-native species which probably offers little habitat for animals and insects.  It has the potential to be an ecological disaster.

SJC

Plenty of corn stalks and wheat straw.

The comments to this entry are closed.