Industrial Biotechnology

Due to the recent surge in energy costs and uncertainties in fuel prices, there is significant interest in seeking alternative sources of energy particularly from renewable such as biomass. Indirect liquefaction of biomass (via the thermo-chemical conversion to syngas followed by liquefaction via...

When produced from waste lignocellulosic materials, hydrogen is one of the most promising options for a long-term, net-zero emission energy carrier. A major barrier to industrial scale production of bio-H 2 is its techno-economic feasibility. Advances in consolidated bioprocessing are required to...

Furfural is an important chemical and also a building block for production of drop-in hydrocarbon fuels and can be produced from cellulosic biomass such as woody crops and bagasse by hydrolysis and dehydration with mineral acids. However, furfural yields employing current technologies are limited...

Bio-Ethanol/water separation by fractional distillation becomes a popular industrial process to remove water from ethanol-water mixture. However, the mixture of 95.6wt% ethanol and 4.4 wt% water is an azeotrope and cannot be further purified by distillation. Alternatively, this can be achieved by...

A carbon dioxide – water pretreatment process was developed for guayule biomass. The guayule biomass was mixed with water and then loaded to a reactor where it was exposed to a biphasic environment consisting of CO2 rich vapor phase and water rich liquid phase. Then, the biomass was enzymatically...

Converting raw solid biomass into liquid or gas phase intermediates which can be readily upgraded to hydrocarbon fuels is the most challenging or energy intensive step during the biofuel production process due to the complex composition and structure of biomass. We are developing cost competitive...

One of the limitations of screening enzyme combinations using microplate based assays (Gao et al. 2010, Bioresour Technol 101, 8:2770) is that these are typically carried out using milled biomass (1 mm). The crude glycosyl hydrolase mixtures were also analyzed using a high-throughput proteomics...

Saccharification of fermentable sugars is one of the most critical steps in producing bio-ethanol from lignocellulosics through Consolidate Bioprocessing (CBP). However, the extreme pH and ethanol concentration are commonly considered to be the potential inhibitory factors for the application of...

Cellulose found in almost all plant cell wall, making it one of the most abundant renewable and sustainable natural resource on the Earth’s surface. Cellulosic ethanol is receiving increasing attention as a viable alternative to the commonly used fossil fuel, petrol. Cellulosic ethanol is a second-...

The utilization of switchgrass as a dedicated energy crop is well documented in the scientific community. However, there has not been any large-scale production of switchgrass as a feedstock for the production of biofuels. In this work, three different varieties of switchgrass were grown on 600...