Converting Waste Agricultural Biomass into a Resource - UNEP

Cellulose contains glucose, the same type of sugar—a six-carbon (C6)
sugar—that is found in cornstarch and that can be fermented to ethanol using
conventional yeasts. However, hemicellulose contains mainly non-glucose
sugars—five-carbon (C5) sugars. Conventional yeasts cannot ferment most
non-glucose sugars to ethanol with commercially acceptable yields.
Celunol's technology is based on the metabolic engineering of
microorganisms. Its key element is a set of genetically engineered strains of
Escherichia coli bacteria that are capable of fermenting, into ethanol,
essentially all of the sugars released from many types of cellulosic biomass.
This trait enables Celunol to achieve the required efficiency to make the
process commercially feasible.
Celunol will use SunOpta's patented pre-treatment equipment and technology
in the Jennings facility. SunOpta’s pretreatment and hydrolysis technology will
prepare sugar cane bagasse and possibly hard wood waste for conversion
into ethanol.
Specific Considerations for Developing Countries
Celunol’s biomass ethanol technology offers numerous marketplace
advantages:
• Feedstocks costs will be lower, and less volatile, than corn.
• Cellulosic ethanol facilities can be fueled by lignin waste streams derived
from the process itself, avoiding the high and volatile price of natural gas
as a boiler fuel for steam and electricity.
• Plants can be located outside traditional ethanol manufacturing areas and
near end-use markets, creating a transportation cost advantage.
• Plants handling agricultural or urban wastes, pulp and paper sludge, etc.
can simultaneously meet acute waste remediation needs, earn tipping
fees, and yield valuable products.
Examples of Real Life Applications
Celunol operates the Jennings pilot facility, on a 140-acre company-owned
site in Jennings LA, designed to produce up to 50,000 gallons of ethanol per
year. Celunol commenced operation of its newly expanded pilot facility in
November 2006.
It is building a 1.4 million gallon demonstration facility to produce ethanol from
sugarcane bagasse and wood, targeted for completion in mid 2007. This will
be the first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States.
Later, the Company is planning a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol facility
at the site.
The company has also licensed its technology to Marubeni Corp., a Japanese
conglomerate, which has recently started up, the world’s first commercial
cellulosic ethanol facility in Osaka, Japan that employs wood waste as a
feedstock. The Osaka Project utilizes wood waste as feedstock in producing
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