The first Inbicon pilot plant (2.4MT/day) opened in 2003. The technology was scaled up 10 times in 2005. In late 2009, the first Inbicon Biomass Refinery opened (96MT/day) and was integrated with the largest power plant in Denmark.
The Inbicon technology is based on a one-stage steam pretreatment followed by solid/liquid separation and enzymatic hydrolysis. The solid fraction is treated enzymatically at high dry matter with patented mixing technology and the resulting glucose is fermented to 2g ethanol. Up until now, the liquid fraction was used for biogas. Due to the one-stage steam pretreatment technology without acid addition, the Inbicon biorefinery recovers more than 90% of the lignin as an excellent solid biofuel low in S content, for replacement of coal and wood pellets.
To increase the ethanol yield further, Inbicon has developed a new version of the biorefinery in which it is possible to include the hemicellulose in the ethanol production. The utilisation of the hemicellulose sugars will increase the ethanol yield by more than 50%, which is proven in pilot scale and will be implemented in the Inbicon Biomass Refinery in 2013. One-stage steam pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis with or without C5 bypass and post-hydrolysis is the basis for the flexible Inbicon biomass refinery in this presentation.