SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is the production of low cost glucose from biomass. The production of cost-competitive biofuels from biomass has been a significant industrial challenge due to the high cost of fractionation and conversion into sugars and biofuels. A renewable solvent has been shown to enable the efficient fractionation of the biomass into three components, which can be further processed within the solvent into higher value products. One of the component parts of biomass can be further processed to produce glucose. The ability to co-produce glucose with one or two other high value products from a single source of biomass provides a significant economic advantage. With success, this biorefinery concept will enable the production of cost competitive glucose for biofuels from a variety of biomass types.

The objectives of this Phase I research project are to demonstrate the low cost production of glucose from cellulosic sugar in gamma-valerolactone and use the by-products from this process to produce the gamma-valerolactone. The first step in the process, fractionation of the biomass, has been demonstrated at bench scale using multiple types of biomass. The solvent solubilizes the five-carbon carbohydrates (C5) and lignin components leaving a solid cellulose. Production of the C5 carbohydrates in the renewable solvent has been proven to be advantageous versus aqueous systems as the increased reactivity of acids in these solvents allows for the utilization of low concentration of acid, short residence times (minutes) and low temperatures. The lignin is preserved in these mild conditions and precipitated out; while the C5 carbohydrate is converted into furfural. This project proposes to apply the same solvent advantages in the conversion of cellulose to sugars delivering monomeric glucose at low cost. The solvent utilized in the process will be produced from by-products, demonstrating that the process can be self-sustainable and improve the carbon utilization. The glucose produced will be similar to the glucose produced from corn or sugarcane and will be competitive in price.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project provides a technology platform to convert non-food biomass, such as wood and corn stalks, into biofuels, chemicals, and bioproducts. Biomass utilization is a solution to increase global sustainability and decrease petroleum-based greenhouse gas emissions. This project will use wood biomass to simultaneously co-produce three high-end products, dissolving pulp, furfural, and technical lignin, of which the dissolving pulp and furfural are the focus of this project. Current methods of producing these products only use one of the three primary biomass components. By co-producing two products, revenues increase and unit production costs decrease as production costs are spread over a larger product volume. The use of this solvent obtained from the biomass is a unique approach in the biomass conversion industry and offers an alternative to conventional enzyme or microbial processing. Benefits include restoring furfural production in the United States, decreasing dissolving pulp production costs, and increasing the commercial value of renewable biomass that currently has low or no value. This sustainable and environmentally friendly technology will increase global sustainability and revitalize rural economies by stimulating investment and creating jobs. The objectives of this Phase II research project are to demonstrate and advance to pilot scale our technology to simultaneously co-produce dissolving pulp and furfural from biomass using gamma valerolactone (GVL) as solvent. While other technologies focus on the production of a single product from biomass, GVL?' ability to fractionate lignocellulosic biomass into its three main components (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) at high concentration and purity, produce significant cost and technical advantages. GVL fractionation produces solid cellulose at high yield (>90%) and purity (>90%), without the need for pre-treatment or further chemical refining. This cellulose can be converted into dissolving pulp for high-end applications such as textiles (rayon), cellophane, or microcrystalline cellulose. The hemicellulose fraction does not need to be separated from the GVL and is readily converted into furfural within GVL at high yields (>75%) and high concentrations, minimizing separation costs. Preliminary mass and energy balances and techno-economic modeling based on lab data predict attractive financial returns. Tasks will focus on biomass fractionation to produce dissolving pulp, furfural purification, and GVL recovery at bench-scale. This experimental work will inform the engineering development for an integrated, continuous process, pilot demonstration unit.