European project to produce second-generation biofuel from forestry waste

The €8.2 million NEMO (novel high performance enzymes and micro-organisms for conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to bioethanol) project, which has received funding of €5.9 million from the European Union, aims to develops enzymes that can be used to break down lignocellulose into sugar compounds suitable for fermentation. The objective is also to tailor the metabolism of microbes so that they can produce large volumes of ethanol from these biomass sugars economically and efficiently.

The four-year project will include the evaluation of the suitability of the developed enzymes and yeast strains for industrial biofuel manufacturing processes.

Currently, most biofuel is produced using first-generation technology based mainly on sucrose in sugarcane, or starch-based glucose contained in corn, as raw material. Apart from the sugarcane, the current production methods are not energy-efficient enough and their impact on reducing carbon dioxide emissions is not sufficient.

Production of ethanol consists of four stages: the pre-processing of the raw material, the conversion of carbohydrates from polymers into sugar, the fermentation of sugar into ethanol using microbes, and the distillation of ethanol. NEMO will focuses on the pre-processing methods, hydrolysing cellulose using enzymes and the fermentation of sugars using tailored microbes.

NEMO will be coordinated by VTT, and project members include Lunds Universitet (Sweden), University of Helsinki, Universiteit Utrecht (the Netherlands), VIB (Belgium), Chalmers Tekniska Högskola Ab (Sweden), Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Université de la Mediterranée D’Aix-Marseille (France), Universita Degli Studi di Milano (Italy), Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (the Netherlands), Univerza V Ljubljani (Slovenia), Chemtex Italia srl (Italy), Dyadic Nederland BV (the Netherlands), Green Sugar GmbH (Germany) and Sekab E-Technology.