Objective
The business model currently under development for second generation ethanol is a replication of the model used for first generation which is plants with massive annual production capacities. Such high production rates require high capital investment and huge amounts of biomasses (250-350,000 tons per year) concentrated in small radius catchment areas to afford transportation costs (50 km). Under such conditions, opportunities for installing plants in most rural areas in Europe and worldwide are scarce. The objective of the project is to develop an alternative solution for the production of 2G ethanol, competitive at smaller industrial scale and therefore applicable to a large amount of countries, rural areas and feedstocks. The target is to reach technical, environmental and economical viabilities in production units processing at least 30,000 tons equivalent dry biomass per year. This approach will definitely enlarge the scope of biomass feedstocks exploitable for the production of biofuel and create better conditions for the deployment of production sites, to the benefit of rural areas in Europe and worldwide. The main concept underpinning the project relies on a new biomass conversion process able to run all the steps from the pretreatment of the raw material to the enzymatic pre-hydrolysis in one-stage-reactor under mild operating conditions. This new process recently developed to TRL 4, offers the most integrated and compact solution for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of ethanol developed so far, and it will lead to reduced capital and operation expenditures. The new process will be developed to TRL 5 in the project with the goal of achieving satisfactory technical, environmental and economical performances in relevant operation environment. The project will investigate and select business cases for installations of demonstration/first-of-a-kind small-scale industrial plants in different European and Latino American countries.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental biotechnologybioremediationbioreactors
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryalcohols
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbiofuels
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybioprocessing technologiesfermentation
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
H2020-LCE-2015-1-two-stage
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Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
31029 Toulouse Cedex 4
France
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Participants (14)
04510 Mexico Distrito Federal
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28040 Madrid
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31077 Toulouse
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4466-901 S.mamede De Infesta
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51100 Reims
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31076 Toulouse
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02800 Charmes
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05120 Mexico City
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65290 Juillan
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81369 Muenchen
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C1033AAE Buenos Aires
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70 000 Colonia
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32000 Auch
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31500 Toulouse
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