(164b) Integrated Biorefinery Approach to Produce Biosugar from Lignocellulosic Biomass

A group of faculty at North Carolina State University has completed three industrial consortia and multiple government projects over the past 8 years. A number of practical approaches have defined to produce fuels, chemical, and materials from a variety of biomass. All our work considers biomass, production technology, marketplace, and integrated economics for numerous combinations through rigorous techno-economic analysis. Based on our work, we have found that autohydrolysis followed by mechanical refining shows the most profitable return on a Greenfield operation. This simple technology provides several advantages including enhanced enzymatic digestibility, reduced technology risk by using proven equipment, reduced fermentation inhibitors, and enhanced the value of unhydrolyzed residue. In this presentation, the challenges and opportunities will be discussed in detail, which includes pretreatment, mechanical refining, high solid enzymatic hydrolysis, and lignin utilization. In addition, various pretreatment development for the last decades in US will be summarized.