Code No: S065 Price: 1200 Category: Bioprocess & Bioproducts

Published in January, 2009

Executive Summary

Biotechnology has been identified India’s industry of the future. Due to its mega bio-diversity biotechnology offers good opportunities to convert Indian biological resources into economic wealth. In cognizance of the vast potential of biomass as feedstock for deriving liquid as well as gaseous fuels and value-added chemicals, the national level programme on Bioprocess & Bioproducts has been launched by TIFAC towards identification, development & demonstration of innovative bioconversion technologies in the country through collaborative actions among various stakeholders.

As precursor to launching its Bioprocess & Bioproducts Programme, TIFAC had commissioned preparation of comprehensive position papers in the thrust areas viz. Bio-ethanol, Bio-oil, Bio-Hydrogen, Bio-Chemicals/Specialty Chemicals and Industrial Enzymes by the domain experts inducted from the leading national R&D and academic institutions. The position papers have been instrumental in detailed sectoral assessment and formulation of future strategies for the areas identified. These position papers were updated and peer reviewed with a view to publishing them as TIFAC specialized reports.

Effective utilization of biomass for its conversion into energy and value-added products assumes priority for developing countries like India, due to the potential impact of the conversion technologies in terms of their environment friendliness and far reaching socio-economic consequences coupled with employment generation at the rural level. The technologically feasible alternatives to convert biomass into liquid & gaseous fuels, chemicals, biomaterials etc. need to be considered with adequate emphasis in Indian context. There exists a wide spectrum of technology development possibilities in this area. The process parameters, yields etc. with reference to Indian biomass need to be established for both the thermo-chemical as well as biotransformation processes to convert it into fuels & value added chemicals.

The chemical properties of the lignocellulosics make them a substrate of enormous biotechnological value. Plant biomass comprising lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose is one of the foreseeable renewable resources on the planet. With depleting petroleum resources and increasing demand on energy, lignocellulose derived ethanol seems to be the future of transportation fuels. Also it is apparent that integrated bio-refineries, analogous to petroleum refineries, would generate chemicals from the biomass thus moving the world towards a carbohydrate based economy. Such biorefineries would be capable of extracting from biomass, building block chemicals such as starch, hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, proteins and lipids; and then converting them into a wide range of products dealing with almost every possible aspect of our daily life. Development and deployment of efficient and economically viable technologies in commercial scale for production of ethanol from biomass are the major challenges today.

Cost of enzymes, which is one of the critical factors for the process to become economical, needs substantial reduction. Major breakthroughs are needed to reduce the cost of producing cellulases, hemicellulases and to bring improvements in their activity and efficiency. A concerted effort in understanding the basic physiology of cellulolytic microbes and the utilization of this knowledge coupled with engineering principles is imperative to achieve a better processing and complete utilization of the plant biomass.

Hemicellulose constitutes a major portion of the biomass, which plays a crucial role in the quantitative biomass conversion to useful products. The complete bioconversion of hemicellulose to sugar monomers is considered to be the main hurdle in the commercial success of bioconversion processes from the technical as well as the economic point of view.

Cellulases and hemicellulases have numerous applications and biotechnological potential for various industries including chemicals, fuel, food, brewery and wine, animal feed, textile and laundry, pulp and paper and agriculture. Lignocellulose biotechnology from investment perspective could be an attractive option for developing countries since its biodegradation could be achieved by solid-state fermentation, thus making such technology suitable for farms and small industrial plants without the need for large engineering infrastructure. The need for more efficient bio-separation processes leading to pure enzymes with less number of steps and lower costs needs to be developed towards commercialization.

The removal of lignin from woody biomass has attracted a great deal of research, especially due to its importance in the pulp and paper industry as well as for bioremediation. Ligninases, the enzymes of choice encompass a wide range of enzymes viz. laccase, lignin peroxidase and manganese peroxidase that have the capability to degrade a wide range of aromatic substrates thereby holding a great potential for bioremediation as well as Industrial applications.

The thermo-chemical processes for biomass treatment include combustion, gasification and pyrolysis. Pyrolysis converts biomass to mainly liquid fuels e.g. bio-oil. The yields of products depend on biomass composition, heating rate, pyrolysis temperature and residence time in the pyrolysis reactor.

Hydrogen is considered to be an ideal energy carrier for the future, which contributes to reduction of energy-linked environmental impacts, including global warming due to anthropogenic carbon emissions, mobile source emissions e.g. CO, NO, SO2 and NMHC (non-methane hydrocarbons) and particulates. H2 can be produced as a storable clean fuel from primary energy sources e.g. solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and from biomass as well. H2 has the unique feature of upgrading biomass and waste effluents to common liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, thus providing flexible, sustainable energy source. Both photo-fermentation and dark fermentation processes can yield H2, and the most important advantage of such processes is the use of renewable energy sources as substrates.

Table of Contents

CHAPTERS

Executive Summary

1.    Bio-ethanol
1.1    Ethanol from biomass
1.2    Bacterial Ethanol Production
1.3    Bioconversion of cellulose/hemicellulose to ethanol

2.  Bio-chemicals

    2.1 Chemicals produced from Biomass
    2.2 Technology gaps and proposed policy
          Near Term Studies (up to 5 years), Long Term Studies (Beyond 5 years), Likely Partners

3.    Bio-oil

3.1    Conversion Processes
3.2    International Scenario
3.3    Indian Perspectives
3.4    Action Plan
3.5    Likely Deliverables

4.    Bio-hydrogen

4.1    Technology Trends – International Scenario
4.2    Hydrogen Technology – Indian Perspectives
4.3    Technology Roadmap

5.    Industrial Enzymes for Bioethanol from Lignocelluloses

5.1    Cellulases
5.2    Hemicellulases
5.3    Cellulases & Hemicellulases – Global Industrial Perspectives
5.4    Processing of Cellulases & Hemicellulases
5.5    Lignin Degrading Enzymes