World’s largest commercial cellulose ethanol project begins construction

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On November 30, DuPont announced that construction had begun on its cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa. The factory requires an investment of over $200 million, and is expected to be completed by mid-2014. Once operational, it will produce 30 million gallons (approximately 80,000 tons) of cellulose biofuel products per year, using raw materials such as corn straw and corn cobs among other waste materials. This will become the world’s largest commercial cellulose biorefinery project. 　　DuPont initially designed the ethanol facility to process 1,300 tons of corn straw per day, producing 27.5 million gallons of ethanol per year. DuPont states that the scale of the projects announced this time is larger than the initial one mainly because the data from DuPont’s validation facility in Tennessee has enabled the company to further optimize the processes and technologies. The capital investment for the annual designed capacity of this commercial-scale facility is approximately $7 per gallon of product. 　　The cellulose ethanol production process includes five steps: grinding, pretreatment, enzymatic saccharification, mixed-sugar fermentation, and product separation. The new enzyme and fermentation microorganism optimization technologies developed by the company enable integrated unit operations with lower investment costs. DuPont states that its fully integrated production system enables technology transfer on a global scale. 　　It is understood that this project will utilize DuPont’s Accellerase TRIO enzyme complex. The raw materials and pretreatment techniques associated with this enzyme have a wide range of applications; it can provide all the necessary enzymatic activities for the efficient hydrolysis of biomass into C5 and C6 sugars, and the amount of enzyme required is only half that of traditional enzymes. 　　James Collins, President of DuPont’s Industrial Biosciences business, said, ’About 10 years ago, DuPont began developing innovative technologies to enable the production of cellulosic ethanol with low capital costs and low expenses.’ By scaling up DuPont’s innovative production processes and integrating them into a comprehensive technology platform, we will be able to develop a cellulose ethanol project that is affordable for users and sustainable. ' 　　It is understood that to ensure the supply of raw materials for this project, DuPont has entered into contracts with over 500 local farmers to collect, store, and transport more than 375,000 tons of corn straw for this project each year. In addition to creating 60 regular factory jobs, the project requires over 150 people per harvest season to handle the collection, stacking, transportation, and storage of corn straw. 　　DuPont also plans to expand its cellulose ethanol technology to other feedstocks. It is said that they have begun conducting experiments to produce ethanol from switchgrass using a testing device developed in collaboration with the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. 【Source: China Chemical Industry Network】