Qu Yinbo
State Key laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University
Currently, cellulosic ethanol production technology has entered the stage of commercialization in the United States, Europe and Brazil. Following the facility of Beta-Renewable company in Italy, which has a capacity to produce 60,000 tons of cellulosic ethanol annually, formally opened in October 2013, three cellulosic ethanol facilities in the United States and one facility in Brazil started operation in last few months.
In recent years, China has built several sets of cellulosic ethanol pilot or demonstration unit. Shandong University and Shandong Longlive Biotechnology Company jointly developed a biorefinery project with capacity of 50000 tons cellulosic ethanol using corncob residue as feedstock, which has been approved as the first designated second-generation fuel ethanol enterprises in China in 2012 by the National Development and Reform Commission. The 2G ethanol had been produced and used to prepare gasohol for transportation fuel market. The success dependent on using advanced biorefinery concept. The different components of corncob were used to produce different products (xylitol or xylo-oligosaacharids from hemicellulose, ethanol from cellulose, and biomaterial from lignin), which sharing the cost of raw materials and processing. The cellulases were produced on-site with corncob residue as carbon source. By extracting lignin out as a product, the efficiency of hydrolysis and fermentation of cellulosic residue was greatly improved, and the dosage of enzyme was reduced remarkably. Therefore, the production cost of cellulosic ethanol is close to that of grain ethanol, making it become the first corncob biorefinery plant in the world.
Recently, by using genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and other systems biotechnologies, the efficiency of industrial enzyme production strains were improved in order to further reduce the cost of sugar production from cellulose, and the metabolic engineered yeasts were constructed for glucose-xylose co-fermentation of the hydrolysate of lignocellulosics. We are also trying to develop new biorefinery processes for oil palm empty fruit bunches (EFB), agricultural straws and residues in paper mills, to promote the development of non-food cellulosic biomass biorefinery industry faster in China and in the world.
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