18544: Integration of a Membrane Based Extraction Process into NREL’s Biorefinery Vision

In the future, it is anticipated that multi-product biorefineries will be used to convert lignocellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals, in which, it may be possible to use membrane-based separations to recover fuels and various products and to improve energy efficiency. To biochemically convert biomass a pretreatment step is required to increase the susceptibility of the biomass to enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis. However, many pretreatment processes release not only fermentable sugars but other compounds that are toxic to the fermenting microorganism. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of using membrane extraction for removal of acetic acid, sulfuric acid, furfural, HMF and other toxic compounds from dilute acid pretreated corn stover to reduce its toxicity. Acetic acid in its protonated form was extracted from the liquor portion of a corn stover hydrolysate across a membrane into an organic phase consisting of oleyl alcohol and Alamine 336, the latter a tertiary amine containing aliphatic chains of 8-10 carbon atoms. Other toxic compounds such as HMF and furfural are also co-extracted into the organic phase. The sugars in extracted and ammonium conditioned hydrolysates were fermented to ethanol by glucose-xylose fermenting Zymomonas mobilis 8b. We then performed an economic evaluation using the NREL process model by substituting the membrane extraction process for ammonium hydroxide conditioning. We will discuss our comparative fermentation and process evaluation results.