This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will demonstrate a more effective and economical process for extracting the chemical and energy resources from lignocellulosic biomass. Existing lignocellulosic pretreatment technologies use any of a variety of chemicals, heat, and mechanical energy to separate the poorly hydrolyzed lignin from the cellulose, and hemicellulose for enzymatic hydrolysis to sugars, and fermentation of sugars to alcohol, or in the case of anaerobic digestion to biogas. The use of chemicals, or operation at high temperatures and pressures dictate the cost of pretreatment. This research will investigate a process that pretreats lignocellulosic biomass at low temperature and pressure without the use of chemicals. The process operates with very low energy inputs and may be driven by waste heat. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be the adoption of an economical process for the efficient extraction of energy and chemical resources from biomass. The pretreatment process will be used for the production of liquid and gaseous fuels from lignocellulosic biomass. The process will be used to reduce waste residuals from biomass processing by increasing the percentage of the biomass converted to renewable energy. Potential markets include agricultural enterprises that produce liquid and gas fuels from energy crops or crop residues, such as bio-refineries, farms with anaerobic digesters, composting facilities, municipal and industrial solid waste facilities, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and bio-refineries for pre and post consumer solid waste processing. The process is expected to lower the cost of bioenergy production and thereby improve its use while reducing GHG emissions
