cellulosic ethanol from wood and municipal waste

Ethanol FeedstocksWhat is Cellulosic Ethanol?
Virtually all ethanol manufactured in the United States is produced from the starches and sugars found in corn, sugar cane or other agricultural crops. The starches and sugars in plants are the portion of the plant mass that humans can digest for energy as well as the part of the plant that is most easily fermented into ethanol. As ethanol production from food crops has exploded in recent years, concerns are rising over the amount of arable land, once used for food production, that is being displaced for energy crops as well as the energy and pollution balance of the whole ethanol production cycle.

Starch and sugar represent a small fraction of a plant's total mass. The majority of the plant (e.g. stalks, leaves, and roots) is cellulosic biomass. Cellulosic biomass is abundant in agricultural wastes, forestry waste, and municipal garbage.

The cellulosic portion of the plant can not be digested by humans because the sugars in the material are bound together by lignin. This characteristic is also the reason that cellulosic material cannot be used in the same ethanol production processes as the sugar and starch portions of the plant.

Producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass requires using a chemical or biologic process to separate the sugars in the material from the lignin that holds them together, otherwise known as hydrolyzing the cellulose. We believe that our HFTA technology, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, has substantial advantages over any other available means to hydrolyze cellulosic material for ethanol production.