News

December 16, 2013

Switchgrass advance: JBEI’s Ionic Liquid Pretreatment, Enzymatic Hydrolysis Scales Effectively

Results show that IL pretreatment at 15% biomass generates a product containing 87.5% of glucan, 42.6% of xylan and only 22.8% of lignin relative to the starting material

December 12, 2013

Recovery Of Biomass-derived Valuable Compounds Using Chromatographic And Membrane Separations

Utilization of biomass-based raw materials for the production of chemicals and materials is gaining an increasing interest. Due to the complex nature of biomass, a major challenge in its refining is the development of efficient fractionation and purification processes. Preparative chromatography and membrane filtration are selective, energy-efficient separation techniques which offer a great potential for biorefinery applications.

June 25, 2013

Techno-economic Analysis and Life-cycle Assessment of Cellulosic Isobutanol and Comparison with Cellulosic Ethanol and N-Butanol

This work presents a detailed analysis of the production design and economics of the cellulosic isobutanol conversion processes and compares cellulosic isobutanol with cellulosic ethanol and n-butanol in the areas of fuel properties and engine compatibility, fermentation technology, product purification process design and energy consumption...

February 14, 2013

High Gravity and High Cell Density Mitigate Some of the Fermentation Inhibitory Effects of Softwood Hydrolysates

After steam pretreatment of lignocellulosic substrates the fermentation of the biomass derived sugars to ethanol is typically problematic because of both the generally low sugar concentrations that can be supplied and the presence of naturally occurring and process derived inhibitors.

August 18, 2011

Berkeley Lab Opens Advanced Biofuels Facility

The ABPDU will help meet the challenge of scaling the production of advanced biofuels from liter quantities to tens of liters