Cellulosic Ethanol Path is Paved With Various Technologies

Ethanol Producer Magazine
July 2008

In the midst of rising oil prices, the economics of producing cellulosic ethanol are becoming increasingly favorable and several companies are steadfastly moving to commercialize various process technologies. It would be easy to view this development as a race pitting one technology against the other but is that really the case? Is one approach better than another?

By Jessica Ebert

The development of technologies for the production of ethanol from biomass feedstocks such as wood dates back to the years leading into the first two world wars. Germany, in particular, being a land poor in petroleum began developing internal sources of fuel. Much of the country’s war machine, in fact, was powered by locally produced ethanol. The process technology of choice at this time was a biological approach consisting of concentrated or dilute acid hydrolysis to release simple sugars from wood followed by microbial fermentation of those sugars to ethanol. Although pioneered by the German war effort, the United States, Russia and others followed suit, establishing their own wood-to-ethanol plants.

But this was not the only approach to the self-sustaining production of renewable fuels being spearheaded by warring nations. Scientists in coal-rich Germany had been developing a thermochemical process for the conversion of coal into synthesis gas that was subsequently reformed into fuel using a catalyst. This approach, dubbed the Fischer-Tropsch process for its originators, researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, was also used in South Africa to produce liquid fuels from coal and natural gas during the years of apartheid.

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