Ethanol from Trashy Sources Advances

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September 26, 2017

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by Melody M. Bomgardner (Chemical & Engineering News) Firms turn to garbage and wheat straw to make the fuel alcohol — Residents of Edmonton, Alberta, will soon be able to fuel their cars with household garbage, albeit indirectly. Enerkem says it is successfully producing ethanol from nonrecyclable or noncompostable trash at a nearby facility it first turned on back in 2014.

At Enerkem’s plant, trash is gasified and then converted to methanol using catalysts. A separate on-site process transforms the methanol to ethanol. The company plans to progressively increase ethanol production in Edmonton while it pursues similar projects in Europe and China.

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Enerkem developed a bubbling, fluidized bed gasifier that runs at lower temperature and pressure than traditional plasma gasifiers.

Ethanol from garbage is classified as cellulosic ethanol by regulators, making it similar to biofuels made from agricultural wastes. These advanced biofuels offer higher greenhouse gas savings than does ethanol made from crops, and they don’t displace land used to grow food.

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Now, the Slovakian company Enviral plans to make cellulosic ethanol from wheat straw at its Leopoldov site using Sunliquid technology licensed from the chemical maker Clariant. The process uses specialized enzymes to break down the tough straw along with microbes that can ferment a mixture of C5 and C6 sugars into ethanol. READ MORE

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