Genencor Celebrates Major Progress in the Conversion of Biomass to Ethanol
Thursday October 21, 8:00 am ET
Reduction in Enzyme Cost Overcomes Significant Obstacle in Alternative Fuel Production
PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Genencor International, Inc. (Nasdaq: GCOR - News), and U.S. government representatives gathered at Genencor's Palo Alto headquarters today to celebrate their progress in the quest to convert biomass to ethanol and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Genencor scientists and colleagues from the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) acknowledged the significance of the completion of their 4-year collaboration to reduce the costs of enzymes to enable a commercially viable process of using cellulosic biomass (such as agricultural waste) to make ethanol, which can currently be made from sugar cane and starchy grains.
Genencor also announced that it has achieved an estimated cellulase cost in the range of $0.10-$0.20 per gallon of ethanol in NREL's cost model. This represents an approximate 30-fold improvement in enzyme cost in that model. NREL is expected to validate these results at pilot scale within the next quarter. Genencor noted that the actual enzyme cost and the final cost of ethanol in a commercial process will be heavily dependent upon overcoming the remaining hurdles in the development of integrated biorefineries.
"We have exceeded the contractual goals and the expectations of the DOE and NREL," said Michael V. Arbige, Genencor's senior vice president of technology. "But more importantly, we have overcome a critical hurdle in making biorefineries and alternative fuels a reality."
The technology developed is an important step toward realizing the potential of biorefineries, analogous to an oil refinery today, in which plant and waste materials are used to produce an array of fuels and chemicals. Further progress toward a commercially viable biorefinery depends on the development of pilot-scale, real-world processes for biomass conversion. Genencor is working with Cargill-Dow on such a project, also funded by the Department of Energy (DOE), and looks forward to working with others as biorefinery development advances toward industrial scale.
Earlier this month, this work was acknowledged by R&D magazine as one of the Top 100 Technologically Significant Products for 2004, in a joint award to Genencor, NREL and Novozymes Biotech... |
