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BIOLYFE results

View the summary of BIOLYFE project

Download the BIOLYFE Handbook: Part I, Part II

Download the Integrated Sustainability Assessment of BIOLYFE 2nd Generation Bioethanol

View BIOLYFE Newsletters

Final BIOLYFE Conference, 4th December 2013, Brussels. View the presentations

2nd BIOLYFE Conference, 4th June 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark. View the presentations

BIOLYFE SWOT Workshop, 3rd April 2013 in Madrid, Spain. Find more information here

The official opening ceremony of the new fuel station took place on 7th June 2012 in Tortona, Italy. It was possible to fuel vehicles with E10 and E85 bioethanol. More information on the event you may find here 

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Feedstock pretreatment

The pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass is necessary in order to increase the accessibility and solubility of cellulosic components. The aim is to reduce residence time (i.e. reduced capital costs) and enzyme consumption (i.e. reduced operating costs). Moreover, mass losses should be minimised in terms of non-fermentable products and fermentation inhibitors. Steam-explosion is currently considered one of the most effective and least costly physicochemical pretreatments for biomass. The process uses saturated steam at high pressure to destroy the biomass structure from inside the pores resulting in a physical breakage of the bonds between lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose without the addition of chemicals or high energy input.

Biochemtex has developed a continuous process consisting of two treatment steps with different residence time. With this system, biomass is disrupted with the same effectiveness as in the standard steam explosion procedure while steam consumption as well as inhibitor formation is decreased. Within BIOLYFE, this pretreatment was tested with the selected feedstocks and pretreated materials are characterised thoroughly. The final aim was to optimise the pretreatment of selected feedstocks with a view to increasing the efficiency of following processing steps.

 

 Pretreatment

 

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