October 6, 2006

DuPont and Broin join hands to make cellulosic ethanol

Two technology leaders in the growing biofuels industry, DuPont and Broin, announced a partnership in the US to take effective measures for bringing cost-effective ethanol to market.

After having worked for over three years, the industry has finally worked out a way to efficiently break down the complex sugar matrix found in corn stover into ethanol from cellulose at a high yield, disclosed Thomas M. Connelly, executive vice-president and chief innovation officer for DuPont.

While awaiting the completion of research, he said they were prepared to move towards bringing cellulosic ethanol in the market. This would reduce global reliance on petroleum.

DuPont had been working with the US Department of Energy to develop technology to convert corn stover into ethanol. The Integrated Corn-Based BioRefinery (ICBR) is aligned with DuPont's strategy to convert energy crops, such as grasses, and agricultural byproducts like straw and corn stalks, into biofuels and other renewably sourced materials.

The ICBR technology would increase the amount of ethanol per acre achievable by using both corn grain and stover. DuPont's "first in class" fermentation process allows high conversion of both C-6 glucose sugars and the difficult to ferment C-5 xylose sugars to ethanol at high yields.

For conversion, a micro organism called Zymomonas mobilis is used, which is well-suited for efficient conversion of sugar.

Broin and the US Department of Energy also jointly funded a five-year research initiative to develop and improve dry mill fractionation with help from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and South Dakota State University.

The project provided for the commercialisation of Broin's fractionation technology, or BFrac(TM), which together with the company's raw starch hydrolysis process BPX(TM), creates the foundation for biorefining in the future.

Some of the results churned out by the technology included higher ethanol yields and additional value-added products.