description
- Today, USA and Brazil have massively invested in ethanol mono-production, taking advantage of their respective native crops, intensive culture practices and large availability of land. These renewable biofuel production models cannot be applied to most of the industrial and emerging countries. For these countries with limited land use, one of the best solutions to comply with their objectives of renewable biofuel and avoid food/fuel competition is the production of ethanol from diversified lignocellulosic residues. Yet, more research efforts are necessary to reach this objective. The BABETHANOL project proposes solutions for a more sustainable approach of 2nd generation renewable ethanol, based on a “moderate, environmental-friendly and integrated” transformation process that should be applicable to an expanded range of lignocellulosic feedstocks. The new process, called CES - Combined Extrusion-Saccharification, will be an alternative to the costly processes of the current state-of-the-art, notably the pre-treatment requiring much energy, water, chemical products, detoxification and waste water treatment. CES will be developed and tested from laboratory up to semi-industrial pilot scale with different new feedstock: Blue Agave Bagass, Palm Oil Empty Fruit Bunches and Olive oil Milled Husks. A Europe-Latin America lignocellullosic biomass catalogue will also be developed as a further contribution to the expansion of feedstocks. The success of the new project much relies on the well-balanced consortium with 7 European partners, 8 Latin American partners, the multidisciplinary expertise with agriculture/agronomy, chemical/catalysis, microbial systems engineering, industrial plant design and the integration of SMEs.