A LIGNO-CELLULOSIC BIO-REFINERY PROCESS
Under licenses from ASTM approved North American renewable fuels technolgy companies, SACL is responsible for developing greenfield and/or brownfield conversion refinery opportunities, for the production of Ligno-Cellulosic Ethanol and Bio-Oils. These products are then sold as intermediate feedstocks, suitable for further refining into modern fuel derivatives, such as, Ethanol, Renewable Diesel and Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
Our licenses provide access to patented technologies to make renewable fuels and chemicals from cellulosic material, such as Woodchip, Sugarcane Bagasse, Bamboo and/or Savannah Grasses.
The problem has always been that plants have evolved to protect their energy, starches and sugars, from microbial attack by encapsulating their energy in an armour called Lignin. Until now, scientists have been trying to develop more and more exotic (and expensive) enzymes to destroy this Lignin armour, with limited commercial success, producing less than 50 US Gasoline Gallon Equivalent (GGE) of fuel per Metric Tonne of cellulosic feedstock.
Newer technologies, pre-treat the biomass material using a proprietary solvent solution. This pre-treatment can separate any cellulosic material into its core components of Pulp, Furfural and Lignin. The resulting pulp, releases 100% of the available sugars and starches, free of metallic impurities, that often inhibit the efficiencies of all known existing enzymatic digestion processes.
As a result, one metric tonne of woody biomass from refined pulp, can now be easily digested by inexpensive Gen 2 enzymes, enabling producers to use low cost, off-the-shelf ethanol production equipment to produce ethanol. This ethanol can then be further refined into fuels such as A2J-SAF.
The separated Lignin is not wasted. The Lignin stream is captured and distilled out during the process. It is converted into a Bio-Oil, becoming a hydrotreated “ester”, an intermediate feedstock that any existing petroleum oil refinery can co-process into valuable fuel products such as Renewable Diesel, Renewable Gasoline and SAF. This intermediate oil derivative, is basically a sulphur free, low oxygen, crude oil alternative feedstock, that can be converted into fuel by existing refinery infrastructure, contributing to an overall yield of >120 US GGE of fuel from the same metric tonne of input biomass. Future developments involve capturing and coprocessing the Biogenic CO₂ off-gases from the ethanol lines, to further enhanced the process and generate additional fuel.