AN EVOLUTION FROM PRETREATMENT TO FRACTIONATION WILL ENABLE SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTEGRATED BIOREFINERY

The current state of biorefinery development is focused almost entirely on the production of fuel ethanol. However, an ethanol-centric approach misses the crucial example set by the petrochemical industry. The ability to fractionate a raw material, rather than simply pretreating it, enables the parallel production of low value, high volume fuels and high value, low volume chemicals. By developing analogous fractionation processes for biomass, giving separate process streams of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, the biorefining industry will be able to recognize the synergistic advantages of producing both energy and profits.